June 27, 2007
SFist Photo: Fewer Garbage Cans in San Francisco :(
We hope this can will be able to stay. It was overwhelmed a few days back during Pride Weekend.
Last week's announcement about the recent reduction of municipal garbage cans on the streets of San Francisco hasn't gone over so well with some. Read about the blowback here. Supervisors Jake McGoldrick and Tom Ammianno don't appear pleased anyway. Something seems wrong when beloved local businesses like Mitchell's Ice Cream resort to fashioning their own cans out of cardboard. Let's hope we can work this all out.
(And what are the brand names adorning the garbage strewn about our city according to a recent study? Let's see, in order: McDonalds, San Francisco Muni, Burger King, Starbucks, Safeway, FedEx and Jack in the Box. Sounds about right to us.)
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Add in the San Francisco Examiner which is all over every residential street in the castro either in or out of its plastic. They are by far the worst trash offenders on residential streets.
Dave (the other one)
Do they just throw the Ex on random doorsteps every day? I've started having it appear (unasked for) occasionally on my stoop.
- Ciaran
This would not really be an issue if the garbage company emptied the most heavily used cans on a daily basis.
Or if the city wants to save some money, see if some community volunteers or those SWAP people (the ones from county jail that cleans-up the city) would do the work to empty the trash and put the trash in a central dumpster in the neighborhood. The trash company doesn't have to go can to can to empty it, they just go to one location, which is cheaper to do.
Why spend to remove them and store them? (Gotta pay rent to store them too!) Just keep the cans and have volunteers or folks from jail empty them (free labor!!!).
Yep they just drop it on the street. I have cancelled delivery 3 times, and it works for a couple of weeks, and then I think there is a lot of turnover with delivery people and they blanket the whole street again. The papers are everywhere, so much for a city daily newspapers civic pride...
I'm interested to see how this works ...
I stopped to pick up a bunch of real estate guides that someone allowed to fall and scatter on the sidewalk, and I threw them in the City trash bin on my walk into work today. If there were no trash bin nearby, I probably wouldn't have bothered (granted most people walked through the same pile without thinking twice about taking two minutes to pick them up and dispose of them properly like I did).
I have no doubt people are abusing the City trash bins, using them in place of paying for trash collection (abuse).
I don't buy the argument that people are going to litter if there is no trash bin nearby. People who litter will litter no matter how close by a trash bin sits. People who respect their neighbors enough and the environment to not litter will slide their wrappers, butts, bottles, whatever into their pockets until they cross a trash can to properly dispose of it (granted, I don't know that I've ever seen a cigarette smoker not toss their cigarette butt on the ground .... encouraging me to support any and every smoking ban that comes up).
How many times have you watched kids and adults stand up in the bus and let their candy/ice cream/chips wrapper fly out the bus window and onto the streets? How many times have you walked behind someone in Chinatown or the Mission who just allows their trash to fall to the ground? It doesn't matter to these people if there are trash cans nearby or not - they have no respect for what they're doing to the quality of life for the folks who live there and the environment.
I say, give it a try ... see how things work out. People who are complaining right now probably are facing the possibility of actually paying for trash collection or just don't like change. As the saying goes, the only folks who like changes are wet babies.
Akit's idea sounds pretty good -- a network of "trash arteries," carried by prison labor.
Get a list of businesses which aren't currently paying for trash collection. Put someone outside watching them. Wait till they try to dump their trash in a street can or someone else's can, then bust their ass. There must be fines for this sort of thing?
This was happening in the Western Addition all the time - residential trash cans would suddenly fill up with waste that looked suspiciously like it might be generated by a barber shop or a BBQ joint. There just happened to be one of each nearby...
I live just a couple blocks away from Mitchell's and visit there far too often, but they have NO cause for complaint when a public garbage can is removed from the street corner nearby. Why should City taxpayers pay for Mitchell's garbage collection? If you serve paper cups of ice cream and spoons and napkins to people, many of whom eat it right in front of your shop, why on EARTH would you not expect to have to put out your own garbage can?!? Here's five bucks, go to The Container Store and buy a nice garbage can...
I have a friend who lived in an apt. bldg. right on Castro. One time I was with her, we were leaving & she said she needed to take her garbage out. She put it in one of those bins on the street. When I asked why, she replied that THAT was their gabage bin FOR THE WHOLE BLDG!!
Guess once again Mr. Mayor doesn't know what he's talkin' about.......
oh wonderful, wonderful. Another Dumb Bunny move by our Dumb Bunny mayor.
There's lots of trash on the streets. Ergo, take the trash cans OFF the streets. Where does Dumb Bunny think the garbage will magically go?
This guy really is as dumb as people say he is if he thinks this. Maybe he needs a friend to sound out the big words for him in the future before he makes Yet Another Boneheaded move.
I should note that the inmates at the various SF county jails that do the field work clean-up projects wear ankle bracelets and are the folks, and are the least risk people to escape. This is similar to the state prisoners that fight wildfires.
Don't be so hard on the mayor; he's had other things on his mind lately:
hxxp://www.sacbee.com/101/story/241566.html
There's lots of trash on the streets due in part to all of us allowing assholes to litter and trash up the streets. If you turn your head, what do you expect? Infestation baby. The passive-agressiveness in this City is ridiculous.
The photo is misleading ... take a photo in an area where there aren't ~500,000 people lined up for a parade. Bias in the media.... :)
Take a drive out thru the Outer Sunset sometime...there are corners with garbage cans (like on Judah) and there are corners without cans...and they ALL have residential garbage dumped there. Almost every morning, there is some new trash bag full of household litter stuffed under the mailbox on the corner or left behind a parked car. Last summer, someone left a hefty bag full of trash on the corner of 46th and Kirkham. After it had been run over a few times, someone else decided it burn it, which only partially worked. So the whole mess sat there for about another week until someone hauled it way. It's disgusting!
Legally, shops that sell food (corner stores ice cream shops) must have a trash can outside by the door.
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In the Mission we asked DPW to remove city trash cans which were not on commercial streets.
Why? Because residents use them to throw their household trash, and because they are trash "magnets." That is, people dump refuse next to the cans.
We also suggested that our-city's-most-vulnerable be given the jobs of manual street sweeping to earn a bit of cash and to keep the streets clean, but that didn't go over well.
Generally, it's a matter of "pride of place." There is virtually none in SF.
Even shopkeepers and homeowners don't keep their building exteriors and sidewalks clean.
Actually, that sounds like an example of EXACTLY what Newsom was talking about, unless your sarcasm has escaped me: the building owner should be paying for trash services, but is instead directing tenants to the public bin.
"I have a friend who lived in an apt. bldg. right on Castro. One time I was with her, we were leaving & she said she needed to take her garbage out. She put it in one of those bins on the street. When I asked why, she replied that THAT was their gabage bin FOR THE WHOLE BLDG!!
Guess once again Mr. Mayor doesn't know what he's talkin' about.......
Actually, that sounds like an example of EXACTLY what Newsom was talking about, unless your sarcasm has escaped me: the building owner should be paying for trash services, but is instead directing tenants to the public bin."
I think he is mistaking city bins for the big blue norcal waste bins that all residential trash are picked up in.
It sounds like the OUter Sunset residents need to figure out how to handle THEIR trash issues - peer pressure, public embarassment, whatever works. Freeloading or just plain littering is something folks either choose to tolerate or not.
Removing the trash cans is stupid. Fining people who illegally litter or dump household trash is smart. But that would require a DA and SFPD willing to do anything at all.
I'd say a citizen who videotapes another citizen in the act of littering in public should qualify as evidence to slap a $1,000 ticket on that litter bugs wrist. I'd be happy to bust scofflaw neighbors or visitors who litter up my hood - I don't need SFPD sitting on the corner to do this.
" the Mission we asked DPW to remove city trash cans which were not on commercial streets.
Why? Because residents use them to throw their household trash, and because they are trash "magnets." That is, people dump refuse next to the cans."
this is what happens when you have landlords like myself that provide two of the smaller NorCal (or whatever the trash company name is) for 8 units, all of which have 5 bedrooms. Every single week the cans overflow and the trash company will not pick up bags that are not physically on top of the can. them bums go through all the trash in the middle of the night, leaving at least 2-3 bags to sit in the middle of the street. i'm not about to sift through other peoples garbage and carry it back inside to throw away.
there is no way to enforce landlords to have adequate trash. and therefore all the cutty landlords in neighborhoods like the mission/TL/anywhere else "lower income" will cut any corners they can.
The City needs to investigate doing what east coast cities like Philly and NYC have done for generations--provide public sanitation to replace the private operators such as NorCal (sunset scavenger, golden gate disposal).
It all goes to the same landfills, but if the City were responsible for removing both public and private trash, paid for out of taxes, then there would be no more excuses based on dividing up responsibility for cleanliness in the public realm.
-marc
Hmm.. seems like there could be a City ordinance requiring a trash can per unit or two.