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I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

sfchronicle.com

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Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#31

Post by atwood22 »

sometimesjerks wrote: post #24
atwood22 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this list of requirements ignores the fact that plenty of other cities have trash cans that fulfill their purpose.

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…

Most places try to use the law to discourage anti-social behavior.

Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#32

Post by [deleted] »

iancmceachern wrote: post #30
jerlam wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main competitor for these trash cans is the BigBelly, which cost $3,000 a year to lease. They've already been deployed in some parts of SF and surrounding cities. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Ci...

Not true. The main competitor is a regular dumb trash can you can buy from home depot for $50. Edited to say $50 not $10 per below comment.

[deleted]

Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#33

Post by mindslight »

iancmceachern wrote: post #30
jerlam wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main competitor for these trash cans is the BigBelly, which cost $3,000 a year to lease. They've already been deployed in some parts of SF and surrounding cities. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Ci...

Not true. The main competitor is a regular dumb trash can you can buy from home depot for $50. Edited to say $50 not $10 per below comment.

^ Perfect demonstration of the bikeshed effect.

You could have looked at some commercial supply catalogs and seen that trash cans used by businesses cost significantly more. You could have searched around and found that businesses and other institutions have significant costs for installation, maintenance, tracking, abuse, environmental factors, etc that require more substantial solutions to mitigate.

Instead, I'll summarize that into this rebuttal comment, and I may even convince you that a $10 trash can that goes next to your toilet [0] won't work as a city trash can. But it won't stop the next person from posting the exact same type of anti-enlightening comment and thinking it's insightful.

[0] These days it's $50 for a 44 gallon Brute, which will still get stolen or tip over in the wind.

Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#34

Post by atwood22 »

mindslight wrote: post #22
atwood22 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, I went on to address exactly why that is. US labor is expensive, because our currency has been continually hollowed out by the deliberate government policy that prices must always go up, despite continual technological and economic progress trying to make things less expensive. Sorry, what policy is that? Are you talking about how the Federal Reserve targets 2% inflation? Every country does that. It's importa…

> Are you talking about how the Federal Reserve targets 2% inflation? Specifically 2% inflation defined in terms of a consumer price index where the cost to produce manufactured goods is continually dropping. Draw a diagram of the feedback loop, and you'll see that the only way to make that target happen is for the cost of non-offshore-manufactured goods to increase much quicker than 2% to compensate. Put another way…

> I understand the orthodoxy, but the computing industry has had four decades of overwhelming deflation and has been quite vibrant the entire time.

This is an interesting point I haven't thought of. Perhaps the reason it happens with the computer industry is that the utility of digitization is so high that the impetus to do the work now usually outweighs waiting for a cheaper price. Thanks for the insight, though. It has changed how I view this issue.

Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#35

Post by mindslight »

atwood22 wrote: post #34
mindslight wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you talking about how the Federal Reserve targets 2% inflation? Specifically 2% inflation defined in terms of a consumer price index where the cost to produce manufactured goods is continually dropping. Draw a diagram of the feedback loop, and you'll see that the only way to make that target happen is for the cost of non-offshore-manufactured goods to increase much quicker than 2% to compensate. Put another way…

> I understand the orthodoxy, but the computing industry has had four decades of overwhelming deflation and has been quite vibrant the entire time. This is an interesting point I haven't thought of. Perhaps the reason it happens with the computer industry is that the utility of digitization is so high that the impetus to do the work now usually outweighs waiting for a cheaper price. Thanks for the insight, though. It…

That's a good point, but the same thing can be said about food, or even discretionary leisure spending. It's a scalar result rather than a binary one. So to me, the real question is do we need more or less manufacturing/consumption in the world today?

Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#36

Post by FerretFred »

> US citizens need to start feeling embarassed that we can no longer manufacture simple objects cost efficiently

UK citizens need to start feeling embarrassed that we can no longer manufacture simple objects. Period. We buy all our crap from China. I'm so ashamed.

Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#37

Post by rahimnathwani »

sometimesjerks wrote: post #10
dogline wrote: post #3

With the assumption that there are smart people involved who thought this was a good idea -- The article really doesn't go into detail what's new here. Looks like it's trying to be graffiti-proof, perhaps other ways to be easy to maintain. Lots of things like this aren't always obvious. If you said it's $10-20k for a trash can (well, they did), that sounds silly, but there should be a reason these are being considere…

I think this is a really interesting topic because there's a surprising amount of consideration that needs to go into something like this. Most people think "oh, a trashcan, how hard can it be to design one?". Here's a list of the requirements of these trashcans, mostly taken from here ( https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/san-francisco-trash-c... ): - Durable: they can't be easily damaged due to physical force, r…

It's surprising to me that a city with a sub-million population needs custom trash cans.

Are the trash cans used in NYC, Chicago, Berlin, London or wherever good enough?

Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#38

Post by prirun »

mindslight wrote: post #5
cwkoss wrote: post #2

US citizens need to start feeling embarassed that we can no longer manufacture simple objects cost efficiently. These trash cans should cost $1k max. I wonder if this cost discrepancy is due to pork or too many middle managers. Not even sure why the trash can needs a redesign. Will this increased cost ever give an ROI over a long enough enough time span? Or will some other bureaucrat decide they need to make a name f…

> I wonder if this cost discrepancy is due to pork or too many middle managers. The cost "discrepancy" is due to cheap offshored mass manufacturing for most everything consumers buy, plus social media validating uninformed off-the-cuff opinions. $11,000 is about a month of a welder plus designer. Is it terribly hard to imagine that the process of building a prototype with a few refinements would take $11,000 worth of…

It didn't cost $11K to design and build a prototype. According to the article:

"The city’s Department of Public Works famously decided no city in the world had ever placed a trash can on its sidewalks that would meet San Francisco’s exacting standards and designed three bespoke, wildly expensive prototypes just for us. It took nearly four years and $550,000 to get this far, but now they need our help."

Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#39

Post by iancmceachern »

mindslight wrote: post #33
iancmceachern wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. The main competitor is a regular dumb trash can you can buy from home depot for $50. Edited to say $50 not $10 per below comment.

^ Perfect demonstration of the bikeshed effect. You could have looked at some commercial supply catalogs and seen that trash cans used by businesses cost significantly more. You could have searched around and found that businesses and other institutions have significant costs for installation, maintenance, tracking, abuse, environmental factors, etc that require more substantial solutions to mitigate. Instead, I'll s…

Thank you, point noted and accepted. I revise my comment to say $50

Re: I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found

#40

Post by klyrs »

klyrs wrote: post #11

TFA only seems to have pictures of the one trash can. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article... These designs are all bad. The recycling space is uselessly small. The middle one won't accept an empty takeout container. The one on the right has moving parts that people need to touch to use. Most people don't want to touch a damned trashcan downtown, what are you even thinking?! People are focused…

Self-reply after some consideration.

It looks like the one on the right is foot-operated, which is cool for people of average height and two feet. I smell an ADA lawsuit, but at least most people wouldn't need to touch it with their hands. But it will encourage people to throw out their returnables, which leads to the question "why do so many people rifle the trash?"

In the Vancouver area, trash cans have a little ledge where you're supposed to put returnables. From what I can tell, there's a pretty high rate of participation. It keeps the valuables out of the trash, and it simplifies collection. I guess it flies in the face of the American culture of security and authority, but it's a simple fix that takes people's actual motivation into account and addresses it there. Because, unless those cans are guarded 24/7, somebody is going to figure out how to quickly jimmy them open and that knowledge will disseminate quickly.

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