WasteNews.com:
BigBelly Containers Live Up To Name
April 28, 2008 09:33 AM
Needham, MA - With a name like BigBelly, this trash can sounds like it's meant to be stuffed, and it is.
The can is designed to hold about five times the volume of a typical waste receptacle because it's a trash compactor, but it's no average crusher - it operates on solar power.
The BigBelly solar trash compactor from Needham, Mass.- based BigBelly Solar is the first and so far only stand-alone solar-powered trash compaction system. The company, which began its life as Seahorse Power Co., was started in 2003 because founder Jim Poss said he kept seeing overflowing garbage cans in downtown Boston.
``I had a background in electronics, especially electric vehicles, so I knew in my head how to solve the problem: with a solar-powered trash compactor. I knew it was technologically feasible to run it purely off solar power, but it wasn't very easy to get there. It took four years to figure it out, but the machines work great, even with ambient light at bus stops in Seattle,'' Poss said.
``You don't have to worry about the wiring, you can move things around. But with our solar technology, we had to develop some pretty advanced, actually very advanced, energy management systems to power this compactor for a couple of reasons: Typically with trash cans you're not dealing with locations that have a lot of sunlight. You don't have a choice to put them where the sun is so strong, so we had to push the technology to allow us to do that. And we had to generate 1,400 pounds of force to compress the trash in any location, even those with lousy solar exposure. Basically, we have to run our panels where the sun don't shine.''
The unit holds 150 gallons of trash, compacted to about 20 percent of its normal size. This allows for longer stretches of time between collections, saving time and fuel and freeing workers to do other things.
``We looked deeper and found a lot of other problems out there,'' Poss said. ``Litter overflows in the parks, on the beaches and into the sewers, but it's the collection that is a huge burden. The trucks are expensive and get about 3 miles to the gallon, and they burn over a billion gallons of diesel a year. Think about all the problems associated with that and how it could improve if we cut consumption.''
Putting BigBelly cans on beaches, for example, reduces litter that attracts seagulls, thereby reducing droppings that contribute to bacterial contamination of the water, Poss said.
``We want to take the garbage trucks and help people use them as efficiently as possible,'' he said. ``If we can make one truck as effective as four trucks, that's a good thing. The cheapest, most efficient garbage truck is the one you don't have to use as much.''