There’s a new trashcan in town, and it has an appetite to cut down on odor, litter and those pesky rats that scamper throughout the city. The large, black, solar-powered trash compactors, known as “BigBelly,” have been sitting in Central Square parks, and neighborhoods of North Cambridge, Harvard Square and around Area 4 as a result of the city’s Rodent Task Force.

Say hello to ‘BigBelly’ in Cambridge

Cambridge, MA -  There’s a new trashcan in town, and it has an appetite to cut down on odor, litter, and those

pesky rats that scamper throughout the city. …

Minka vanBeuzekom, a Cambridge resident and task force member said in a letter that the group’s goal is to “steadily eliminate sources of food and harborage until the rats get the message that they’re not wanted in our city.”

And BigBelly is just the trash compactor for the job.

“They just seem to work,” she said.

Sightings of rats have been especially high in Central Square, vanBeuzekom said. The new trash receptacles – that are near impossible for rodents to get into – contain solar panels to help compress the trash, keeping the garbage dry, the odor away, and the process of waste removal easier for city workers. …

Lisa Peterson, the city’s Department of Public Works Commissioner, said the city decided to purchase BigBelly receptacles because they have four to five times the capacity of a regular trash barrels, and when placed strategically throughout the city, help reduce diesel fuel emissions from the city’s vehicles.

“It’s a contained unit and a cleaner unit,” Peterson said. “We are pleased with that.”

Right now there are 31 BigBelly trash compactors on the streets of Cambridge – four in Harvard Square, and the majority in Central Square at Clement Morgan Park, Sennott Park, and Lafayette Square Plaza, with nine more sitting in the DPW yard waiting to be installed. With each new park being rehabbed or built in Cambridge, a BigBelly will be installed, Peterson said.

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San Marcos, TX – Head to downtown San Marcos, and you’ll find a trash can with one big appetite.

“This is a BigBelly solar compactor,” said Mayor Susan Narvaiz.

…Added Parks and Recreation Facilities Director Jimmy Venable: “It’s five times as much trash as you get in one can.” And it’s an appetite fed by the sun….

San Marcos is testing out three of these solar-powered trash compactors…. [S]ince trash is compacted down, they rarely need to be emptied.

“Since we got these downtown, we’ve emptied them twice, where the other ones have been emptied 2 or 3 times a week,” said Venable.
The city hopes the units will pay for themselves in four years. So far, they’ve gotten plenty of second-looks.…

“We want to see a cleaner, greener San Marcos,” said Narvaiz….

“So far, [the solar trash cans have] been working pretty good,” said Venable.

You can find the solar-powered trash compactors on the town square in front of San Marcos Title Company, on LBJ Drive near University Drive, and at Hopkins and Guadalupe streets.

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Port Orchard, WA – Kitsap County has been awarded $2.29 million in federal stimulus funding for projects that will cut down on energy use. Now, the county commissioners and other officials have to figure out how to spend the money. …

To access the money, the county must show it will be used on projects that meet federal and state energy-efficiency guidelines. The county’s criteria required the projects to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, result in long-term savings on county operations and “set an example of energy efficiency, clean energy and renewable resources.”…

Eric Baker, the county’s special projects manager, estimates the proposed projects would save the county 20-25 percent annually in facilities and departments where they are applied. The proposed projects are one-time expenditures that will produce long-term results and won’t require ongoing funding, Baker said.

The board will do some last minute whittling to get to the $2.29 million limit, Baker said. Items on the nearly finalized list include:

• Installation of 80 Big Belly solar trash compactors and recycling kiosks at county facilities, $408,500. The project will save the county 2,200 hours of staff time per year and reduce its mileage on maintenance vehicles by about 29,000 miles each year.

…

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I came upon an interesting contraption on the exhibit floor at Waste Expo this week: a solar-powered trash compactor. It’s the brainchild of Needham, Mass.-based BigBelly Solar and uses a 30-watt solar panel that charges a battery that in turn compacts trash as it accumulates inside the bin. Waste Management recently partnered with BigBelly to distribute the bins in the places it operates in North America, and they are already being used by many schools, parks departments and zoos around the country—in fact Philadelphia is installing 500 of the compactors on its streets as part of its Greenworks project.

The bin contains an electronic eye that spans the top of the 32-gallon barrel inside the unit. Once enough material accumulates to block the beam, it triggers the compactor to engage, using 1250 pounds of force to ram the trash into the barrel. In total, the barrel can hold roughly 150 gallons of compacted waste. Also, the unit contains a small display that shows when the barrel is nearly full and when it is completely full. A wireless link to the municipality allows dispatchers to send trucks to the cans only when they are full.

The benefits of compacting trash
Compacting the trash means the bins need to be emptied less frequently than standard bins—a lot less frequently. BigBelly estimates that four out of five pick-ups can be eliminated, and this equals an 80 percent fuel reduction for the local garbage truck fleet. And since garbage trucks are such major gas hogs, the compactor can operate for eight years on the same amount of energy that a truck burns in one mile, according to BigBelly. Yikes.

What this all means for the parties that buy these containers … is a return on their investment should come in less than 18 months.

In places such as parks and beaches, where conventional bins often overflow and garbage spews out, this compactor could really go a long way toward reducing litter. While I don’t think litter in itself is always a bad thing—it has some awareness-raising value—it can easily translate into serious environmental degradation once sea birds and other animals consume it and it winds up in our rivers and streams (hello, great eastern garbage patch) not to mention drawing and habituating wildlife into our fast food nation.

But think about it. When you’re at the park or the beach, or even when you’re walking down a Manhattan street, what are you mostly likely going to place in this trash compactor? A paper bag. A plastic, or glass, or aluminum drink container. So what happens when 150 gallons of mostly recyclable waste gets compacted and shipped to the local landfill? Isn’t a great amount of reusable, energy-packed material being dumped?

In most cases, yes, it is. …

Fortunately, BigBelly makes companion bins for collecting … bottles, cans and paper. Philadelphia is deploying 210 of these recycling containers (adjacent to a portion of the 500 compactors it is setting out). In some spots on the Stanford University campus, where the greatest number of recyclables are generated, one BigBelly compactor is used for every two recycling bins.

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BigBelly Solar, which makes solar-powered trash bins, is lining up Waste Management as a North American distributor. …

Before the Friday announcement with Waste Management, BigBelly, based in Needham, Mass., had deployed about 2,500 compactors. Its biggest deal was with the city of Philadelphia, which is scheduled to install 500 of them in its downtown this year. …

You also can find the bins around Fenway Park in Boston. …

Lining up Waste Management as a distributor would enable BigBelly to boost its sales. Houston-based Waste Management is a major player in the trash collection and landfill business. The company said it serves almost 20 million municipal, residential, commercial and industrial customers.

Waste Management said it already has installed 15 solar-powered compactors at Patriot Place, a retail and dining space, next to the Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass.

Waste Management would be the only company in the trash collection and processing business to distribute BigBelly’s solar compactors. But the deal doesn’t preclude BigBelly from selling its compactors directly to cities, public parks and private businesses, said Richard Kennelly, vice president of BigBelly.

BigBelly also could line up distributors who are not in the waste collection industry.

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Philadelphia, PA – Solar-powered trash compactors called BigBellys are being installed along Philadelphia’s sidewalks. The new bins are powered completely by the sun and hold eight times as much waste as a typical city trash can.

The city is installing 500 of the compactors by July and 210 of them will include separate recycling bins. The greatest thing about these compactors is the fact that they will save the city $12.9 million over 10 years since they only need to be emptied five times a week versus 19 times for the regular trash cans, slashing fuel and staff costs. This also offers the benefit of less CO2 emissions from fewer garbage pick-ups.

The bins include sensors that detect when they’re full and wireless devices that alert the city’s Streets Department that it’s time for pick up. Because trash is enclosed in the bin once it’s discarded, they will cut down on city litter that would accumulate from trash falling out of the old wire bins.

Philadelphia isn’t the only area to benefit from their use. The trash compactors have also been installed at Drexel University, University of Pennsylvania, Chicago’s Millenium Park and Boston’s Fenway Park.