
A Next-Generation Trash Can - pseudolus
https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/12/nyc-garbage-trash-can-design-contest-plastic-metal/603352/
======
buro9
One of the factors in UK bin design in certain public places / spaces is blast
resistance.

About 25 years ago I watched a documentary that focused on how the IRA were
using litter and the bins themselves as shrapnel to ensure that small devices
had a larger impact radius, especially in busy areas.

At the time this lead to a removal of bins in major public places (and they
are still 100% absent from the tube system for this reason), and for those
areas that required bins new designs were sought that were blast resistant.

Blast resistance in this context typically meant that the shell of the bin
acts like a cannon, and the blast is directed upwards so that the impact
radius is greatly reduced and the worst case is that trash rains down on
people.

A lot of bins were replaced over the following decade, but this is not a
requirement I see mentioned much any longer. Are other major cities factoring
terrorism into their street furniture and garbage designs?

~~~
iso1631
Leaving a bag in the UK has always raised suspicion, hence leaving bombs in
bins which were invisible. The added death and mayhem from the shrapnel was
just a bonus.

When the IRA were using american funds to blow our kids up in the 80s and 90s,
it was a more innocent time - nobody really considered a threat where the
bomber would be willing to kill themselves as part of the attack - not in the
west (and there'd only been the one suicide attack by the Palestinians), and
much of the time there were warnings phoned in. Typical bombings were
abandoned car/vans, bags or litter bins.

Nowadays the attack vector seems more knife crime or suicide bombing. There's
far less now too.

~~~
n4r9
I suppose the IRA was motivated more by real-world issues whereas Islamic (or
otherwise) suicide bombers are often motivated by some kind of mythology
involving an afterlife. Of course, IRA members were (almost all?) Catholic,
but Christianity's notions of martyrdom are much more passive than those of
Islamic fundamentalists.

I googled it and discovered that the pIRA did use human bombs, except that the
human involved was under coercion:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_bomb)

You're right about there being far fewer terrorist incidents now. I believe
the London tube bombings of 2005 and Manchester arena bombing of 2017 were the
only suicide bombings in the UK this side of the millenium.

------
officemonkey
>At least one report has named the Big Apple the dirtiest city in America.

Chicago is laid out with an extensive alley system, even in the downtown parts
of the city. In New York, garbage ends up on the sidewalk. In Chicago, all of
that is tucked into alleys. Garbage trucks and dumpsters are all tucked behind
the scenes.

That layout was done generations ago, and is probably the biggest reason that
downtown Chicago smells like chocolate instead of trash.

~~~
novok
New york could sacrifice a few parking spots per block and put garbage bins
there. But the city has spoken and rather have the sidewalks covered with
stinking trash than give up parking spaces.

Ex:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=barcelona+trash+bins+parking...](https://www.google.com/search?q=barcelona+trash+bins+parking&tbm=isch)

------
twic
In (much of) the UK, we have bins like this:

[https://www.broxap.com/derby-standard-litter-
bin.html](https://www.broxap.com/derby-standard-litter-bin.html)

[https://www.broxap.com/derby-e.html](https://www.broxap.com/derby-e.html)

Cuboids or cylinders, with a closed top and large openings on each side.
There's a plastic bag inside, accessed by a door in one face.

This seems to solve all New York's problems better than their new design.
Dustmen only have to lift the bag, not a heavy bin. The openings are narrow,
keeping rubbish safe from wind and bulky waste. They look tidy. The bin is
fixed to the ground, so it can't blow over. Rain can't get in in the first
place (much), so drainage is not a worry.

However, they are a bit expensive: the cheap one there is £200, which is (just
about!) more than the $200 limit New York has set, and councils often install
more expensive ones.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
You can't dump the contents and reuse the bag like the NYC bins.

------
agotterer
The design looks like it ticks some of the requirement boxes. But from my time
in NYC I see two primary problems: 1) the garbage crew literally throw the
cans. Can plastic withstand a daily beating of being thrown against concrete?
2) the garbage cans often find new spots on the same corner when it’s
convenient for the garbage crew to just put it there. Are they really going to
spend time putting the interior containers back in their holders?

~~~
MisterTea
They throw the cans because they're heavy steel monsters weighing 30 lbs or
13.6 kg. One thing I learned being in a family business that dealt with
portable entertainment, the heavier something is the less tolerance a person
has for being gentle with it. They're mad that the object is heavy so they
take it out on it by banging it down or tossing it because "screw you, you
heavy piece of crap!" A lighter pail will be less of a burden and the worker
hopefully won't be as annoyed with it.

~~~
ch4s3
They throw the plastic bags as well, often ripping them open in the process.

~~~
MisterTea
Thankfully they throw them into the truck. But the same heavy thing problem
applies with bags too. A bag of wet restaurant trash can weigh upward of 50
lbs or 22.6 kg. And of course do you think all business owners buy strong
quality trash bags? Half of them are ripped before they even make it to the
curb and the rest are torn up by rats. Trash workers can't help these things.
I worked with a small trash compactor company and owners skimping on bag
quality was an issue.

~~~
ch4s3
I'm strictly referring to residential trash, often in half filled bags. My
experience observing this is limited to a few neighborhoods, but I regularly
see it in Crown Heights and Prospect Heights. The workers there often
carelessly toss around bags and leave large piles of loose trash on the
sidewalks that then sits there for weeks at a time. Surely the city/building
owners/business have a role to play, but let's not pretend that the trash
workers are all doing a great job.

Ideally the city would require stand bins that could be lifted by an arm on
the truck (like many other cities in the US).

------
crazygringo
The new can certainly looks great.

I wonder if there's anything that can be done about _overflowing_ trash cans.
I feel like most of the litter I see in Manhattan comes from when a can is
full so it accumulates next to it.

Is there any way to build a reliable sensor that could somehow be powered
without a (non-existent) ground connection, communicate, and reliably survive
without destruction for years, that could alert the closest sanitation
workers?

It definitely seems like a tall order. I'm not even sure what kind of basic
sensor would be applicable. Unless it was just CCTV feeds with coverage of all
trash cans that could be fed into machine learning to identify "full" cans.

~~~
pluto9
One possible solution is to provide enough volume that they just don't
overflow. In Portugal the trash cans are really just chutes attached to a
hinged "door" in the ground that lifts up to provide access to large
underground dumpsters that can be extracted and emptied by specialized garbage
trucks.

I'm not sure what it would cost to retrofit a city with a system like this.
Possibly more than implementing the sensors you mention, but it's one
potential solution.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
NYC already has enough going on underground (in the form of basements,
cellars, subways, infrastructure) that the idea of underground dumpsters here
is pretty ridiculous.

We have space for dumpsters, we've just elected to use them for free private
automobile parking instead.

~~~
pluto9
Downtown Lisbon has all of those things as well, including lots of streetside
parking space. Presumably they make it work because large above-ground
dumpsters are unsightly, impede pedestrian traffic, and hinder visibility.

------
dr_dshiv
Amsterdam does it best. Underground trash with mechanical claw pickup.

~~~
nik736
They are very expensive and you need a big truck to lift those. It's not
suited for every city and every place.

~~~
llsf
I have seen those underground trash containers in Marseille, France, which
also has tiny (old) streets. I suspect that NYC could benefit from those
underground trash containers, especially in the most popular places, including
the park. Picking those underground containers could eventually be automated
([https://hackaday.com/2017/07/13/automate-the-freight-the-
rob...](https://hackaday.com/2017/07/13/automate-the-freight-the-robotic-
garbage-man/)). According to underground garbage site
([https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-
containers](https://www.elkoplast.eu/underground-containers)), advantages are:
\- a significantly higher collection point capacity, all the container
capacity is moved underground, \- collection frequency reduction, leading to
lower costs and reducing negative impacts on the environment (less CO2
emissions, less noise and traffic), \- all the waste is stored below the
ground level with lower and more stable temperature, slowing waste
decomposition and odor reduction, \- waste is stored up to a height of 2.7 m,
resulting in better compaction by its own weight, \- reduction of vandalism
and the possibility of re-collecting waste, incl. access of animals, \-
aesthetic appearance and cleanliness of the collection point that does not
overflow with garbage, \- access restriction using a card (option), \- remote
filling monitoring (option).

------
endorphone
Fascinating piece of one of the invisible parts of our society.

What really stood out to me was the fatal injury rate of 33 per 100,000 for
trash collectors (in general, obviously). That seems incredibly high.

~~~
2rsf
the rate is for general trash collection, not just those cans. From the link
in the article:

> Lam: Do you feel like you still need to be careful, even though you’re doing
> the same task every day?

Veloz: Absolutely. Every time you get out of the truck and go to the [trash]
box: Don't become complacent. In this business, if you become complacent,
you're looking for death. It's very dangerous because the cable bringing up
the box is like a slingshot. If you make one mistake, and break the cable,
it'll come through the window behind you and it's not going to be a good
situation. You've got wires overhead, you've got trees you could hit that
could fall on the truck. I take every load like it's my first time. We also
get safety bonus $10,000 every three years, which I’ve won.

~~~
dajohnson89
that bonus should be paid every year. but it's a clever program.

------
officemonkey
In many parts of the city, dog waste bags make up a significant portion of
street trash. It would be wonderful if there was a way to compost or otherwise
remove dog crap from the landfill.

I remember reading the book "Ghost Map" (great book, BTW) and it said that
Victorian London had "pure collectors" who collected dog waste and sold it to
tanneries, but apparently that's not a resource stream anymore. :-D

------
gherkinnn
Bins in Zürich [0] are neat. They look about as decent as a rubbish bin can.
Naturally, one unit costs 3100chf / $3200. Alas, it’s going to be gradually
replaced by a different model.

Then there are the “recycling stations” [1] littered across the larger train
stations. They too cost somewhere between $3100 and $3800. At least they seem
to work quite well.

[0] [https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/abfallhai-der-zuercher-kult-
kuebe...](https://www.nzz.ch/zuerich/abfallhai-der-zuercher-kult-kuebel-ist-
vom-aussterben-bedroht-ld.1446432)

[1] [https://www.drawag-tech.ch/recycling-systeme/drawag-
recyclin...](https://www.drawag-tech.ch/recycling-systeme/drawag-recycling-
station-splitup/abfalltrennsystem-sbb-entsorgungssystem-recyclingstation.html)

------
jeffrallen
You could find 10 better and more beautiful designs on a 10 minute walk in a
Swiss city. Research prior art, people!

------
Zenst
In my area of London, UK. We have a bin design that equally and maybe more so
designed to discourage bulk disposal and would also alert when full and
needing emptying. But with anything, things will go wrong. Though when a full
waste bin is headline stuff, you know life is good:
[https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/16974419.anger-
at-n...](https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/16974419.anger-at-new-solar-
powered-big-belly-bins-in-kingston-town-centre-left-overflowing/)

~~~
Nextgrid
I hate these because of how you need to grab and pull a handle hundreds of
people touched before while handling their trash. And you can’t even try and
work around that by using a single finger covered with a piece of paper or
receipt because you need to pull on it relatively hard, making sure there is
full contact between your hand and the contaminated surface, almost like it’s
by design.

I am also not sure this over-engineered and presumably quite expensive device
(plus their ongoing maintenance) actually solves any real problems besides
being political ammo to please environment fanatics due to its solar panel.

~~~
Zenst
>"I hate these because of how you need to grab and pull a handle hundreds of
people touched before while handling their trash"

Yes, I also share your aversion towards soiled handles. Fear not as these ones
also have a foot pedal, which can be actioned with a light step and works
lovely and nice and fluid, actually a pleasure to use and well thought out and
engineered upon that aspect from my experience of them.

------
ixtli
Im a new yorker and i disagree, for what its worth, with the quoted internet
commenter who said they're ugly. They seem reasonably nice to look at relative
to the status quo.

------
systemtest
Unrelated fun fact: Flushing was named after the Dutch city of Vlissingen,
which was the European base of the Dutch West India company.

------
verumn
[https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-
news/more-100-hig...](https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-
news/more-100-high-tech-super-2954834) we have these in bristol now and they
seem to be working great

------
djohnston
"Nagle is skeptical that the litter basket’s redesign will change people’s
behavior, but she says these competitions aren’t futile"

It does seem to address issues like heavy load, but new yorkers with large
amounts of trash will definitely just continue to throw it directly on the
sidewalk.

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
>A cross bar at the top of the basket functions as both a hinge for the lid
and a barrier to stop people from dumping bulk and household trash—which often
overflowed the bins.

Is it just me or is anyone else exhausted by things like this? Every design
has to take into account bad faith actors.

~~~
ndespres
I guess it's just part of why something as seemingly simple as a street corner
trash can is such a challenging problem to solve. I wish I didn't need 500 lbs
of safety features in my car but you need to account for bad actors, idiots on
the road, and accidents. I appreciate when thought goes in to the worst-case
misuses of everyday objects, even a trash can.

It also assumes that the household garbage dumper is going to carry their
trash back to their house and wait for garbage day, when really they'll just
drop their garbage back next to the trash can that it doesn't fit in. There's
another solution to that problem, and they might have the wrong angle entirely
here.

~~~
dajohnson89
I have seen in Brooklyn multiple people pull up to a curb, open the car door,
and dump trash out onto the street. it's appalling.

~~~
L_Rahman
Private vehicle drivers in NYC are a special class of selfish and low
integrity city residents.

------
driverdan
Is there a 99% Invisible episode about this or something similar? If not there
should be.

~~~
Scoundreller
There was. I think the host was sharing how things work in Korea (or Taiwan)?
Where everybody brings their trash/recycling out when the trucks come by.

So no public bins and no private bins.

The host concluded that this would never work in USA.

I mean, maybe it could be implemented over time, but merely proposing it would
guarantee election losses.

~~~
driverdan
That one was more about the way they handle garbage, with daily pickup and
having to carry trash out to the trucks.

I was talking about the design of public trash bins.

------
fennecfoxen
These are the public trash cans that live on the corner? Okay, I mean, it
doesn't hurt, but this city has a massive rat problem, and they're still not
doing anything about the mountains of trash outside commercial buildings in
piles on the sidewalk.

~~~
dajohnson89
there are no alleys in the city. where do you think trash should be placed for
collection?

~~~
L_Rahman
the extremely radical move would be to pull a Taipei - you can't leave your
garbage on the street, the truck just comes everyday at different times and
you walk to the truck with your garbage

time variation means people's different work schedules get covered - whether
you're at home in the morning, afternoon or evening you'll catch the truck 2x
a week

if you live in an apartment building, it makes really good sense to
collectivize and hire the work out to someone or share the shore between
neighbors depending on socioeconomic bracket

~~~
twic
On commercial streets where i live there's a slightly easier version of this -
hour-long slots in every day the morning, evening, and possibly afternoon
where you're allowed to put rubbish in bags on the street, which gets
collected at the end of the slot:

[https://www.haringey.gov.uk/environment-and-waste/rubbish-
an...](https://www.haringey.gov.uk/environment-and-waste/rubbish-and-
recycling/collection-days#timed)

------
krustyburger
I wonder if they even consulted with Oscar.

Residents’ needs should be considered in matters like these.

------
jesperhh
From the headline I thought this was about the new Mac pro..

------
maxaf
But here’s the headline I’d actually like to see:

> New York City unveils a next-generation human who never litters

~~~
xnyan
You joke? but go to Japan. They don’t even toss their cigarette butts (the
smokers I saw carried a sealable ashtray) and when I asked how everyone could
be so clean, they looked at me funny and said “Uh, we live here? Do you throw
trash on the ground at home”

So no next-gen needed, just need to live somewhere it's not culturally
acceptable to throw trash on the ground.

~~~
merpnderp
You can walk around just about any city in my state and see no trash on the
ground. Even homeless camps tend to be cleanish. The only place you’ll find
trash is the occasional rural road where some asshat has thrown their house
garbage in a ditch to spread in the wind. But most people have agreed not to
shit on their floor.

Wonder why places like New York City are so different.

~~~
Ericson2314
New York has been dirty for hundreds of years, often with organized crime or
corruption involved. Read about the 1890s turnaround of the sanitation
department for some interesting history.

But, despite that I think it's totally fixible. Either just change the law to
force setting aside some ground floor real estate, or put bins where parked
cars used to be. I think the latter is more politically feasible.

Nobody likes the filth, but the litter won't stop until the buildings lead the
way with the bulk of the problem.

Oh, and I think food delivery caused tons of pointless trash. We need some
system to return reusable containers to the restaurants. Very sad their is a
restaurant loophole for the new plastic bag ban.

~~~
jandrese
That food delivery thing is an interesting idea. Delivery place switches to
reusable sturdy containers. When delivering the delivery guy asks if the
people have old containers to return and takes them. They're washed back at
the restaurant.

It's a tough sell though. A lot more work for the restaurant and almost
certainly higher costs. There will be constant shrinkage of the reusable
containers to deal with as well as having to pay someone to wash them.

It would probably work best if the containers were generic and everybody used
the same ones, so no matter who you ordered from this time you could return
your containers from last time. But that's an even harder sell: why pass up
the opportunity for advertising?

I still like the idea, but acknowledge that it would probably struggle to gain
traction in the real world.

~~~
Ericson2314
You just gotta tax the externalizes. Markets don't care unless you make them.
The City needs to just make the ban/tax and trust that the private sector can
stop moping and figure it out.

