Seattle has introduced one successful sidewalk display of solar power this past year: the plastic card taking parking meter kiosks (ignoring for a moment that they are more profitable for the City at our expense and that they eliminated many bike parking spaces previously offered by the metal pole supported coin operated meters). I was surprised to find yet another solar powered upgrade on Third Avenue just outside Benaroya Hall a couple of weeks ago without having read any press—good or bad—about it. I had to take a picture and throw something inside it—what I later learned to be the most expensive street trashcan ever produced at more than $4,000.
Seattle’s not the first city to adorn its sidewalk with a BigBelly solar waste compactor. The Big Apple got its BigBelly back in 2005. Chicago Park District just this year introduced 25 BigBellies to its beaches.
Other than the argument that these trashcans are ridiculously expensive, Treehugger.com has the best argument against this “solution,” stating the fact that naturally occurring microorganisms in compacted trash do not obtain enough oxygen, and thus work slower to decompose the trash. Treehugger.com suggests that these trashcans should instead be used to compact separated recyclables, reducing service and transportation costs for recycling paper, cans, and plastics.
Seattle City Council released a “Zero Waste Strategy” in July. This strategy’s name is pretty misleading when read in context to the strategy’s components, which target no such “zero waste” goals. As stated in the news release, our city will be capping the waste it sends to the landfill at 440,000 tons annually. “Zero Waste Strategy” is a perfect example of doublespeak. Councilmember Richard Conlin is quoted as saying, “Instead of accepting more trash as inevitable, we [Seattle City Council and Seattle Public Utilities] are now treating waste as a resource.” Installing new trash compactors downtown does nothing of the sort—-it accepts more trash as an inevitable, non-reusable resource.
If the City of Seattle is really looking for a radical solution to address the problems of servicing city street garbage, they should simply eliminate all trashcans on city sidewalks and force us to deal with own trash. Compacting trash with BigBelly only encourages us to create more trash, when we really need to be encouraged to slim down our trash creating and disposing habits.
Speaking toward the possibility of making our city’s trash problems better, Seattle Weekly ran a feature article “In the Future, Your Recycling Will Be Monitored and Dumpsters Will Be Trashed” in September on CleanScapes, a “dumpster-free” municipal, commercial, and residential trash service. CleanScapes was recently notified that they were awarded the contract for the Central Sector of Seattle--Yesler Avenue north to the Ship Canal.
A screenshot from the Big Belly promotional site shows a trashcan full of recyclables and calls compacting "eco-friendly."