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bigbelly trash cans are making a hugely positive environmental impact Oct 9, 2008
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Girlawhirl wishes that there were – and wonders why there aren't – more trash cans for recyclables in her city. While she no longer totes a plastic bottle of water with her everywhere – she now carries a refillable one – it amazes her that the trash cans on practically every street corner overflow with bottles that really could be recycled. Sometimes she thinks about inventing a special recycling trash can that somehow attaches to a regular one and squishes bottles and cans as they're thrown into it… And while her invention is just a figment of her imagination, the brains behind BigBelly Solar have created what sounds like the perfect combination of trash can and compactor that does far more than keep litter off the street or out of a playground. There's a solar panel on top of the mailbox-like trash can, and when something is thrown away, it's automatically compacted. This means that the trash pick ups are reduced (by 80%!), which takes a lot of garbage trucks off the road.
BigBelly trash cans are catching on across America since the first one was put into use in Vail, Colorado in 2004. Now they can be found at Fenway Park in Boston, Millennium Park in Chicago and even Walden Pond. Find out more at bigbellysolar.com.
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Garbage trucks are perhaps the most environmentally unfriendly vehicles on the planet. They get just 2.8 miles to the gallon and operating one costs more than $100 an hour! Making pick ups less frequent is a huge accomplishment in itself, but the BigBelly does even more, by allowing these compacting trash cans to wirelessly signal their “home base” when they need to be emptied. That means that those gas-guzzling garbage trucks are on the road only when they're needed.
