That depends a lot on your local trash collection infrastructure. Where I live, I take my household trash to a larger collection bin shared by the whole buildin

That depends a lot on your local trash collection infrastructure. Where I live, I take my household trash to a larger collection bin shared by the whole building (~20 apartments) which in turn gets emptied every few days into a garbage truck. Emptying my trash directly in the the communal container (rather than containing my trash in a plastic bag) would not be popular at all, and certainly attract rats in significantly larger quantities than we currently have. There's virtually no time when the communal container is free to be cleaned - definitely not often enough that it would be a sound strategy to put empty household trash directly into it. And yes, we sort out compostables, but a little is bound to end up in the regular trash no matter how diligent you are.