The most high-tech trashcan you’ll never use

The city is attempting to tackle one major source of litter in New York: public trash bins that overflow and blow across city streets. The solution? A Big Belly?!

Last year, the Department of Sanitation tested a high-tech trashcan called the Big Belly. The Big Belly is a solar-powered, compacting trashcan that can hold from 4 to 10 times the amount of a normal public bin. The company that produces the compactor, Seahorse Power, says that, in addition to less overflow and less frequent emptying, Big Bellies mean less odor and fewer rats.

But at around $4000 each, rather than the $100 price tag on a typical city can, the Big Belly has not yet caught on. Another complaint was that people didn’t recognize the then olive-colored contraptions that looked more like mailboxes than trashcans.

This one never really got off the ground in New York, although there are a couple Big Bellies in use in Chicago and a few other big cities in the U.S. 

The city’s newest addition to the anti-litter brigade

The city’s newest addition to the litter patrol is a Street Condition Observation Unit, or SCOUT. (Not sure where the “T” comes in…)

SCOUT is made up of 15 staffers in three-wheeled scooters who will visit every city street each month, recording and reporting on litter, illegal dumping and overflowing litter baskets, along with fallen trees, damaged bus stops, potholes, etc. The SCOUT patrol cannot issue violations, but they are equipped with GPS devices to send the locations of trouble areas to the Department of Sanitation. The new unit has begun to make its rounds, and is supposed to be in full swing by the end of the year.

$1 million dollar trash

This week, a story emerged about a woman who found a painting by the garbage on the sidewalk. Turns out, four years later and after some investigation, the painting was stolen, wanted by the FBI, and may sell at a Sotheby’s auction for up to $1 million.

Residents fined for litter on sidewalk

A new bit of legislation has recently passed (and is awaiting full implementation) that adjusts the times when the Department of Sanitation can fine residents for litter on their property or on the sidewalk in front of their property. Before this law was suggested, anyone could be fined from $50 to $250 between the hours of 8 and 9 a.m. and noon and 1 p.m. if there was any litter at all up to 18 inches from the curb of the sidewalk in front of their home. Residents finally complained loud enough about the fact they could dutifully clean their sidewalk before leaving for work in the morning and come home after a long day to find that passersby had used the sidewalk in front of their home as a trash can, explaining that very few people come home and have time to check their sidewalks during their lunch hour (or half-hour, as is commonly the case).

Apparently, there were two laws in consideration. One included a warning for a first offense. This one did not pass.

What did pass is an ammendment that says the DSNY can only fine residents between the hours of 8 and 9 a.m. and 7 and 8 p.m. Perhaps this will put a dent in the more than $16 million the city is reported to have collected by fining residents in 2006.

Does litter have to be ugly?

In my research, I came across a post by Karen Kingston titled “Litter in Bali.” In it, she discusses how the native people in Bali do not see litter as something disgusting to be concerned about. Instead, she says, “for the Balinese, who are much more etherically based, they see litter as pleasing to the eye, adding colour and variety of texture. Blissfully uneducated to the health risks of litter, they happily live with it, considering it an enhancement of the environment rather than an eyesore.”

While the sweeping assumption concerns me a bit, the idea here is intriguing. Does litter have to be ugly? Why does it bother us to see a black, paved street “decorated” with a bright red plastic cup? And can (or should) we change our outlook so that litter is pretty?

Of course, I cannot forget the environmental concerns behind litter. But this shift in attitude can make the dirtiness of New York’s streets a bit easier to bear.

Adopt a trash can?

It’s become pretty clear during my litter observations that much of the trash that ends up on the streets is because the trash cans runneth over.

The Department of Sanitation has obviously noticed the same thing, because their website includes an option where New Yorkers can adopt a trash can to prevent such spillage. It’s all very sterile, with the trash cans are referred to as “litter baskets” and trash bags as “liners.”

An adoptees’ responsibilites are to “change the liners when the basket is three quarters full and place the full securely tied liners next to the basket for collection.” In exchange, the site says, “The Department supplies plastic bag liners, a collection schedule and a contact person at the Department’s local district operations office.”

I thought Angelina was a good Samaritan for her adoptions, but anyone who voluntarily handles public trash for the purely altruistic reason of keeping the streets clean surely deserves an award of some kind!

LitterBlog

Try to search for other blogs on litter, and most of what you’ll find will be pet related. Lots of “pick of the litter” and litter box discussion going on out there.

There are a few related to my kind of litter…

Litter Project, a campaign to encourage everyone to pick up one piece of litter a day, tried to start a blog to solicit ideas on how to clean up litter. There was one post with nine related comments in March, and nothing since.

Keetsa, a mattress manufacturer, professes their greenness. Their site features a post on keeping litter in its place, with a video by Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh.

Other blogs may occasionally mention the issue, such as Angie Brennan’s amusing anti-litter ditty set to Poe’s The Raven.

One regular (okay, monthly) blog dedicated totally to litter is at a site dedicated to keeping Knoxville, TN, beautiful. However, these once regular posts stopped coming in May.

Any other good blogs on litter out there? Please send them my way!

And the most common form of litter is…

…cigarette butts. Without a doubt, if one were to collect and itemize the litter on public streets anywhere (outside of Singapore, perhaps), cigarette butts would come in first. They may be small, but what they lack in size they more than make up for in sheer volume.

I have noticed that these are particularly popular in grates along the sidewalk. They get lodged down inside and no simple sweep or rinse will free them. And so they will stay until they eventually disentegrate.

It seems that many, if not most, smokers do not consider throwing these items down littering. I know a few smokers who would never consider dropping a piece of trash in the street, and yet they flick their butts as well as any Humphrey Bogart fan. I asked one of these friends about the issue and he said, “So should I throw them in the trash and start a fire?” Point taken.

Yet, can’t throwing a lit cigarette on the ground also start a fire, if it lands in the right (or wrong, more accurately) place?

I am originally from Southern California, more recently known as the land of a thousand wildfires. This summer, Griffith Park in Los Angeles all but burned to the ground after a lit cigarette was thrown into the dry brush. (Read the story at CNN.com) Many expensive homes were threatened, though none burned. The L.A. Zoo was threatened, with no way to evacuate all of the animals in time. In the end, no one was hurt. But nearly a thousand acres of park space were destroyed and who knows how much money lost on firefighting and recovery efforts. And all because of a tiny piece of “litter.”