Other cities have functional trash cans, but every city is unique and the set of problems they solve will be different. In SF the biggest issue is that people are constantly getting into the trash and creating a huge mess, so the cans that NYC or Seattle use won't work because they have an open top design. Many of the cans in London are the BigBelly or bomb-proof variety, but we already ruled that out because of the $3k per year lease fee.
From what I can tell most cities don't have a custom design: they just use whatever commercially available thing is available. SF is hoping this design will be better than those, and that they will be able to sell the design to other cities. I'd love to see how other cities address this issue though... I know that Amsterdam has a fancy underground trash system!
From what I can tell most cities don't have a custom design: they just use whatever commercially available thing is available. SF is hoping this design will be better than those, and that they will be able to sell the design to other cities. I'd love to see how other cities address this issue though... I know that Amsterdam has a fancy underground trash system!