Metro
exclusive

Illegal clothing donation bins pop up across city

Illegal clothing donation bins are popping up across the city faster than the little critters in the game Whac-A-Mole — with violations increasing by 350 percent this year, new figures show.

But for the first time, owners of the illegal bins will be hit with fines and the eyesores immediately removed under proposed City Council legislation.

The bins “have become the bane of our existence,” said Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia.

While the Department of Sanitation tagged just 593 illicit bins in fiscal 2013, the agency marked 2,093 in fiscal 2014.

The increase sparked the Council to try to toughen a law introduced in 2008 that was meant to discourage the proliferation of the secretive and unregulated industry.

One typical bright pink bin – ubiquitous on street corners from Manhattan’s Lower East Side to Bayside, Queens – has a navy “Our Neighborhood Recycling” slogan that makes the bins appear legitimate.

But city officials say the donated goods are sold by businesses for profit.

“New Yorkers are very generous and these illegal collection bins are designed to take advantage of that generosity,” said Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who’s introducing legislation on Thursday to further combat the practice.

Her bill would introduce fines of $250 for first-time violations of placing bins illicitly on public property, hiked to $500 for repeat violations.

Currently bin owners are given 30 days notice before their bins are removed. The result, says officials, is many bins getting shifted to another city property location on day 29, freshened up with a new paint job. The tighter laws will see all bins on public property immediately removed.

Owners of bins placed on private property would also have to register with the city and give an annual accounting of how many goods they collect.