Trash on the street is no longer considered a characteristic of New York but those green mesh trash cans scattered throughout the boroughs still are.
If you are tired of seeing trash piling out of the bins around midtown, you might be excited to hear that the City is well underway with their BetterBin initiative to redesign New York’s trash receptacles. NYC is currently home to more than 23,250 bins and the wire-mesh basket hasn’t received a facelift since around 1930.
According to the BetterBin website, “litter basket refuse accounts for less than 2% of the City’s waste but the presence of a litter basket on almost every highly-trafficked corner helps shape our attitudes and behaviors around waste in general.” And that’s especially true when those bins are overflowing.
The goal of the competition is to “create a practical and efficient litter basket for New York City that reduces litter and better serves both Sanitation Workers and the public.” This means maintaining the mesh exterior so that workers are still able to lift and clear the baskets, but making them more user-friendly and visually appealing for the public as well. Other design elements that were necessary for the selection process included stackability, cost per use, maintenance and security.
Over the course of this year, different designs were submitted by close to 200 architects, urban planners and designers from around the world. This week, three finalists were chosen:
The basket option on the left was designed by New York-based team, Group Project. The center bin is the brainchild of the German design firm IONDESIGN and the bin on the right comes from the team at Smart Design, a London and New York-based design company.
The three prototype winners will receive $40,000 for the build and implementation of these new baskets. They will then be installed and tested in New York City over the course of a few months in Spring 2019.
During that time everyday New Yorkers will be expected to toss their trash and rate these bins with all the honesty and courage they can muster in a public opinion poll. However, the selection of a winner will be left to a panel of trash removal experts (this is only half a joke). The selection will be based on a combination of; basket performance during testing, public comments received during the testing and feedback from the Department of Sanitation employees.
Riveting stuff, New York.
Featured image: core77.com