This is actually just a building code issue. In other cities, ordinances mandate trash rooms or trash chutes for mulitfamily buildings to avoid these issues. One could argue "but nyc grew before sane building codes," but so did boston, or chicago, and plenty of other denser cities that don't have this issue because they have sensible ordinances in place regarding waste management.

I'm willing to bet landlords don't want to make these investments to their properties in nyc, and have more of a voice in local government than their tenants, who are probably mostly indifferent about the issue at this point anyhow.

Many cities have a regular bin-sized contraption where you throw you stuff in and it gets compacted into a big underground container that is part of the sidewalk. They then either get lifted and emptied of sucked empty by a garbage truck.

The sidewalks are plenty wide for that, nyc doesn't even come close to how narrow some european cities without such problems are.

I've lived in a big apartment complex before. The invention that solves this problem is called a chute and a dumpster.

I understand what you're saying but NYC isn't exactly the only city in the world with large apartment buildings.

You would expect the apt building provides dumpsters

Usually such buildings would have a garbage room with big bins that get emptied regularly - at least in sane cities.