Portland, OR – Ten more solar-powered trash cans are on their way to downtown Portland, thanks to the Portland Business Alliance.

BigBelly Solar trashcans compact trash, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and maintenance costs.

Greg Goodman of City Center Parking donated the first two trash cans to the city and will donate another eight through the charitable arm of the Portland Business Alliance. The Downtown Business Improvement District is donating two more units.

“With the summer festival season upon us, you can really see the value of these solar-powered trash cans,” Goodman said. “With BigBelly, trash collections are reduced by 80 percent and more garbage can fit in the container.”

Each public trash can averages five garbage truck visits weekly. The BigBelly units need just one. If all public trash cans were converted, the city could reduce its carbon emissions by about 25,000 pounds, officials say.

The BigBelly units also come with a recycling compartment for street-level recycling.

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Surveys, solar bins, Wi-Fi and, but of course, flowers

Union Square, NY – Expect a few changes in Union Square in the coming months. The Union Square Partnership, the area’s local business improvement district, or BID, has been busy packing in as many amenities as it can before the start of the summer.

The Partnership is greening and cleaning the park with more BigBelly Solar Compactor, sun-powered trash compactors. Garbage is reduced about 70 percent — a ratio of roughly four regular garbage bags to one bag of compacted garbage.

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Solar Trash Compactor in Union Square

Here’s what blogger Marc212 had to say:

New York, NY -  I saw something new this morning walking through Union Square that I hadn’t seen before — a solar powered trash compactor!

Apparently, they’ve been around for nearly a year but I just noticed yesterday.  The site UnionSquareNYC.org says:

“BigBelly’s Greening Union Square – USP is the first business improvement district in NYC to pilot the use of BigBelly solar-powered trash compactors. Three units were placed at some of the district’s busiest corners at 14th St & B’way, 14th St & University Place, and 17th St & B’way to gauge their effectiveness. The compactors have already made a huge impact by reducing garbage collection frequency by nearly 70% at these corners.”

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See the UnionSquareNYC.org Website

Green Games

Vancouver, BC – The host of the 2010 Winter Games is going for green, using its big moment as a chance to catalyze change. All 18 buildings in Vancouver’s Olympic Village are being built to LEED Gold standards, except the community center and one residential building, which are targeting LEED Platinum. Heat recovered from wastewater treatment will warm the Olympic Village’s buildings. Elsewhere in the Olympic complex, the granite for paving and weirs is being harvested from demolished buildings. And new solar-powered trash compactors throughout the city will help cut the volume of trash bound for landfills by up to 80%.

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Philadelphia, PA – The city yesterday unveiled one of the new solar-powered trash compactors that they plan to install throughout Center City in the next several months.

The city plans to replace 700 wire trash baskets with 500 BigBelly solar compactors between now and July.

Philly is also poised to start offering pedestrian recycling for the first time. Recycling cans will be placed next to 210 of the compactors.

“This is all part of that larger effort to clean Philadelphia up, get people to recycle more,” Mayor Nutter said.

Philadelphia, PA -  It’s big. It’s brainy. Officials say it will save money. And it’s solar-powered to boot. …

Instead of having to be emptied 19 times a week – like the current wire bins – the BigBellys are expected to hold out for more than a day and require emptying only five times a week, saving staff time, fuel costs, and greenhouse-gas emissions.

By July, 500 BigBelly “ecostations” are to be installed between South and Spring Garden Streets from the Schuylkill to the Delaware.

Of those, 210 will have companion recycling bins – marking the debut of on-street recycling in Center City. This, too, could produce savings because landfilling is more expensive than recycling.

“We’re very excited,” said Streets Commissioner Clarena W. Tolson. “We’re saving taxpayer dollars.”

Richard Kennelly, vice president of marketing for BigBelly Solar, in Needham, Mass, crunched some city numbers, coming up with $12.9 million in savings over 10 years.

The Center City litter baskets required 33 workers to empty, Tolson said; the BigBellys will need just eight. The others will shift jobs.