The National Public Radio (NPR) recently reported that the Chicago Park District has installed 25 solar-powered trash compactors to keep the beaches clean and safe. The BigBelly units look like ordinary trash cans, but can hold up to 4 to 6 times as much trash as ordinary units. And because they are less prone to overflows, the seagulls and other birds will get less food. This will lead to decreased amounts of birds droppings, which contribute to high levels of E.coli bacteria in the water. These solar-powered trash cans exist for several years now, and can be installed almost everywhere.
The BigBelly can help to clean beaches, cities and other high-traffic areas. Bear and raccoon-resistant BigBelly units can also be installed in National Forests and State Parks. You can see above a photo of one of these BigBelly cordless units on a beach. (Credit: Seahorse Power Company). Here are two links to a larger version of this picture and to a photo gallery.
According to the Chicago Park District, the BigBelly compactors, built by the Seahorse Power Company, look like mailboxes and are very easy to use. "They have a pull-down handle on a small door at the top, 'like a mailbox,' says Washington. 'Once they put the trash in and close the door... the trash drops down.' The olive-colored Big Belly kind of looks a mailbox, too, but with a solar panel on top that recharges a 12-volt battery. Washington says garbage fills up the container until it reaches the level of an electric beam near the top. 'That will trigger the ram, which compacts it,' he says. 'That process happens several times until we reach the maximum volume of trash the machine can hold.' That's about 200 gallons of regular garbage. The park district saves money by making fewer trips to the beach with the city's big, smelly, inefficient garbage trucks."
As I've noted above, these compactors are not really new (read the press coverage to get an idea). And not everyone agrees that these compactors are a good thing. For example, here is what TreeHugger wrote in 2005. "The real trouble is that [BigBelly is] generating compacted trash. And that brings it's own set of problems... Compacted trash is great if you're looking to fit the maximum amount of waste into collection trucks, or landfills. But the flipside of that benefit is that now your landfills get no oxygen, since they're so perfectly compacted. And without oxygen, you don't get decomposition. You get preservation. So landfills end up being giant storage heaps for trash. Which, again, is fine, if you want to keep the stuff. But wasn't getting rid of it the point of making it trash in the first place?"
For more information, you can read the BigBelly product page or this brochure. You can also watch a short video of BigBelly in action put online by one BigBelly resellers in Australia.
Finally, I'm sure you want to know how much such a trash compactor costs. A single unit is sold for about $4,000, but according to the manufacturer, "while the BigBelly system costs more than a regular trash can, it reduces collection requirements by 4 times or more -- saving time and money. The system can pay for itself and save thousands over its lifetime."
So what do you think of these trash cans? Would you like them deployed in your own city? Please drop me a note if you have an answer.
Sources: National Public Radio, July 17, 2007; and various websites
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