This is Brian Lear on WNYC. New York City is famous for a lot of things, our towering

skyscrapers, busy lifestyles, and perfection of pizza by the slice, just to name a few.

But Mayor Adams is hoping to eradicate one thing the city is known for, our sizeable

rat population. The city's most recent war on rats so far has consisted of numerous changes

to our garbage disposal policies, as many of you know, as many of you are living with,

including later trash set out times, enforcement of trash bins for businesses, the appointment

of a rat czar, that's a new title in city government, and more joining us now to give

an update on the work of the city sanitation department, the city entity charged with keeping

our streets clean and rat free. Also on the rollout of the five borough composting program,

and to take your calls is Jessica Tish, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation.

Commissioner, welcome back to WNYC. Thanks for coming on again.

Good morning, Brian. Thank you so much for having me.

And to start on the topic of rats, it's been about five months since the city appointed

Kathleen Karate as the rats are, has the city seen a decrease in the rat population

since her appointment and your department's new trash policies?

So on April 1st, the Department of Sanitation changed the set out times for trash, and we

moved the time back from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. And since April 1st, so in May, June, and July,

we saw a 20% decrease citywide in rat complaints to 311, and notably a 45% decrease in

the rat mitigation zones. Now, changing the set out times isn't the only thing we've

done. We've also put in place requirements that certain types of businesses put their

trash in containers. And specifically, we started with food related businesses, so things

like restaurants, boat diggers, bars, delis, because we know that human food is rat food,

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