You can make straphangers carry their trash out of subway stations, but you can’t make ‘em like it.

The two subway stations that had their trash cans removed as part of a pilot program to reduce waste are remarkably clean, despite public opposition to lugging their leftovers around, a top transit official said.

“We haven’t been able to change their mindset from a perceptional standpoint, but from a behavior standpoint, we have,” Thomas Prendergast, President New York City Transit, said yesterday at the law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan’s transportation forum.

Although some critics of the program had feared frustrated riders would dump their litter all over the stations, Prendergast said the opposite has been the case.

Cleaners at 8th Street in Manhattan and Flushing Main Street have reported finding less garbage on the ground, indicating people are taking their refuse with them.

“The cleaners who work at the station like it,” he said.

The public, not so much.

“A lot of people think it’s … not what we should do,” Prendergast admitted.

Officials are still evaluating whether to continue with the program.

But even if they do continue at those stations, its not likely the subway system will go totally trashless.

Prendergast said going garbage-less was never an option for every single station, but rather one of many ideas officials floated to try and reduce the 50 tons of trash removed from the subways every day.

Gene Russianoff, of the subway advocacy group the Straphangers Campaign, thinks the MTA should bin the pilot program.

“It’s a service to your customers to give them a waste-paper basket,” said Russianoff, who also spoke at the forum.