Trash collectors face more mountains of garbage than eve

Cities can work on all types of new initiatives - sustainability, new museums, bike paths but there's one recurring problem that keeps popping its head up in new and ugly ways and that's trash receptacles.

Here's a new one for you. In Seattle, people complained that commuters were continually overfilling a trash can by a metro stop. What did the city do? Removed the trash receptacle.

It was a sticky situation. Here's the backstory. The metro stop happened to be very close to a Starbucks. As you know, people love to hang onto their mocha lattes to the last drop. So, for that reason, coffee drinkers would all converge on the bus stop and hang onto their drinks until the last second before they stepped onto the bus, and then dumped them in the trash receptacle nearby.

Every day, that trash receptacle would get fuller...and fuller and eventually start spilling out onto the ground.

One solution was to remove it.

That turned out not to be such a great idea. Nearby residents, stoked on Starbucks caffeine, starting complaining in a big way.

So the trash receptacle is now back. But it's BIGGER. That's a smart solution. Trash is not going to go away. Just like they said in the movie Jaws, "we're going to need a bigger boat," in this day and age of cappuccinos on the run, adding larger capacity trash cans is a solution. If you have people who are willing to dump their trash in the right place and not on the street or sidewalk, then why not accommodate them?

How about this one - Olean, NY had plenty of public trash cans available on city streets. It's just many residents were overfilling them with their personal trash.

Many cities are discovering their trash cans are overfilled more often

One council member called for the removal of the trash cans all together. Probably not a good idea. Why penalize pedestrians who are doing the right thing and discarding their trash where they are supposed to?

Council members suspected it wasn't a large number of residents who were doing this, perhaps just a few or even a shop keeper or two. Suggestions were made to enforce fines for dumping personal household trash in public trash cans. But that would require an officer monitoring the location.

A second suggestion was to install security cameras nearby to see who was involved in the excessive dumping.

Another solution was to check communities nearby. Is the trash being properly picked up there? Are landlords taking care of residential garbage like they are supposed to? If they aren't, then residents are going to find somewhere else to dump their garbage.

Either way. It's an issue that probably is prevalent in more towns across America than we can imagine.

The mayor of Trenton had an idea. Just add more trash cans. He noticed many trash cans were constantly overfilled. So he ordered 150 new ones. Also, officials noticed a trash can might seem adequate one day, but then there may be an event held in the vicinity and suddenly trash was spilling out onto the streets.

Their solution was to suggest that the department of sanitation do a better job of monitoring certain areas and anticipating situations where there might be an excessive amount of garbage.

Large capacity 55-gallon concrete trash ca

"Trenton residents, visitors and members of our business community need to work together to keep Trenton clean," Mayor Eric Jackson said  in a statement. "Increasing the availability of trash receptacles will help us keep refuse off the streets, sidewalks and parks and seve as a reminder that it is up to each of us to create a more appealing city."

And that's the rub right there. This might be the electronic age of iPads and iPhones but it also seems there is certainly a lot of garbage out there. That's also because this is the age of coffee houses like Starbucks and fast-food joints like Chick-A-Fils on every corner. Consumers are obsessed with biggie drinks and biggie fries which creates BIG amounts of garbage.

Councilman Duncan Harrison, who requested the additional trash cans said, "We really want to encourage residents to use the trash cans, take the initiative to keep their neighborhoods, streets, and blocks clean. If you see trash, take the initiative, pick it up and put it in its proper place and help keep the city clean."

The mayor of Los Angeles got so fed up with seeing so much litter on city streets, he plans to add 5,000 new trash receptacles in the next five years.

For municipalities, garbage is like the tide. It keeps coming in. The best thing to do is be vigilant - add more trash cans, check them more often and continually remind the the public to use them properly.

Note: If your town, school or office is facing a trash problem, contact The Park and Facilities Catalog - we have an enormous selection of trash receptacles and commercial garbage cans from recycled plastic trash cans made from plastic scrap, heavy concrete trash cans that can't be moved, durable metal trash cans that resist UV rays and never fade, aluminum and portable trash receptacles that can be easily moved to different locations and many other products for any environment.

Click here for a handy Buyer's Guide for Trash Receptacles.