Dundalk, MD - The Dundalk Eagle:
Big Appetite For Garbage
May 14, 2008 12:49 AM
Dundalk, MD - Five to 10 times the filth at less than three times the cost. It looks like a sturdy trash receptacle not much bigger than the average park waste bin, but when it comes to trash, BigBelly really puts it away.Baltimore County Recreation and Parks is piloting the use of these high-tech trash buckets with a can in Heritage Park.
“You have the only one in the area right now,” says parks maintenance director Tim Winters.
A sensitive solar panel powers a compressor that smashes waste with over half a ton of force — allowing for greater can capacity and decimating the number of worker-hours required to empty it.
On the company’s Web site, BigBelly boasts to be in use on Walden Pond, at the Alamo and along Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, among other places.
“It’s pretty cool,” says Jordan Hadfield, Dundalk Renaissance Corp.’s Main Street manager. Hadfield was walking his dog through the park when he came across the enclosed can, which he had seen demonstrated at a convention in Philadelphia in March. “I though it was a really cool idea.”
Hadfield wonders if the can will get much use where it is located — along the front of the park, off Trading Place — though he says it will be well-used during the Heritage Fair in July.
Winters says the location was chosen because the county had identified it as a high-volume trash area. And the county does keep track of trash accumulation on a bin-by-bin basis, he says.
Another plus, says Hadfield, is that the can “adds the word ‘solar’ to Dundalk’s vocabulary,” introducing people to innovations that can help improve the community.
Along those lines, Hadfield is making plans for the next Team Dundalk cleanup project May 31 and is looking to partner with residents from West Inverness and Eastfield-Stanbrook. The more people who get involved in picking up around the community, says Hadfield, “the cleaner it is.”