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New York claims a small victory in 'forever war on rats'

A pilot programme of replacing plastic bin bags with sealed containers, hailed by the mayor as ‘trash revolution’, is being credited with reducing rodent sightings

A pilot programme in Harlem, the northern neighbourhood in which the city decreed that all rubbish had to be placed in sealed containers and collected six days a week, is being credited with reducing rat sightings. Rats do not take part in census counts, so the 19 scientists behind the study sought to estimate whether their numbers were rising or falling using records of complaints from members of the public and reported sightings during municipal inspections. The experiment in Harlem followed years in which a great many rodentologists suggested that New York would fare better if it did not present its rat populace with a nightly feast of rubbish, put out on the pavements in gnawable plastic bags — a practice that can be traced to a 1968 strike by the city’s bin men.

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