This is great, but...
I just got back from a two-week trip to the west coast. I am a totally Philly nativist, but man is it cool out there. They have a different way of doing things. In fact, do you know the first thing I did when I got off the plane in the Portland, OR airport? I dropped my magazines in a recycle bin. Crazy, huh?
That's why I am not as excited as the Inky is in this article in today's paper:
City leaders cut the ribbon on a new solar-powered trash receptacle yesterday and then, appropriately, threw the ribbon away.
The ribbon-cutting in Center City came during the unveiling of the BigBelly, a trash receptacle and compactor that can store four times the volume of ordinary litter baskets and cut fuel use and greenhouse emissions from trash collection by 80 percent.
Don't me wrong, this is very cool. And last week's announcement that the entire city is going single-stream is even cooler. And certainly a huge improvement over the otherwise slow pace with which Philadelphia has tackled recycling.
But we are in an environmental crisis. We need more. So why would the city invest ANY money in new on-street refuse receptacles that don't also include recycling bins? Can you imagine how much paper gets trashed at City Hall alone by subway and trolley riders every day? Do you know how many soda cans and water bottles line the streets and end up in trash cans just in Center City on an average day? And if you go to our airport's watse containers...I shudder to even think what you'd find...
Solar power compactors are great, but basic recycling collection in public spaces would be even better.
agreed
In the meantime, there's like two or three public can/glass recycling trash cans in Washington Square. That should be enough for the whole city until they deploy more.
I'd also like some sort of guarantee that the materials in public recycling bins would actually be recycled. All it would take would be one "Fox Undercover" report trailing a trash truck that delivers recyclables to a landfill to turn all the "on the fence" folks off to recycling.
Not only that
They could have at least recycled the ribbon.
On the one hand, I am for
On the one hand, I am for anything that encourages Philadelphians to put objects they're finished with in a receptacle rather than on the ground (or on stoops, in bushes, in flower boxes or potted plants...). But the other advantage of including a combo trash/recycling unit is that it increases the visibility of the unit, making it more likely that people will dispose of their junk altogether. (I've seen this on Penn's campus -- you can spot the multiple big green bins from a block away.) Also, more bins = less overflow and possibly even less frequent servicing. Which, presumably, is the virtue of compacting as well.
Six or seven years ago, an economist wrote a paper arguing that city littering was paradoxically a rational strategy given the lack of trash receptacles. "If I have to walk across the street to toss my soda can, I'd rather just drop it right here." If every corner on every corridor had a trash and recycling receptacle (that was serviced reasonably frequently, mind you) our city would look a whole lot better.
A trash-picker-proof Wastebin
Center City seems to have a problem with late-at-night trash pickers who love to overturn wastebaskets looking for their prize.
It's either that, or a taxicab has to be hitting wastebaskets from the hours of 12:00-5:00AM. There's a wastebasket at 15th and Chestnut that seems to get hit almost every other night, leaving CCD to pick up the aftermath when their staff come on shift the next morning.
I'm also for mandating the removal of dead honor boxes from the pavement around town in exchange for larger bins. Seems like a nobrainer. Anybody else seen an honor box in this city that hasn't been graffiti'd all to hell?