Baltimore’s Trash Cans Go High-Tech – at $3,795

By Karen Buckelew

Those sleek green boxes perched along the Inner Harbor promenade are just as state-of-the-art as they look – the latest in garbage technology.

They’re called BigBelly Cordless Compactors, and they use solar energy to compact the trash they hold. They can store three to four times as much garbage as ordinary cans, according to their manufacturer.

This week, the Baltimore City Department of Public Works began placing 18 of the $3,795 units around the harbor. They replaced almost 40 of the molded concrete trash cans that had been tucked into nooks along the harbor since its development as a tourist destination in the 1970s.

That’s a total price tag of more than $68,000. The ordinary trash cans that remain at the harbor – black metal cans made by Victor Stanley Inc. of Dunkirk – cost $536 each.

The investment will be well worth it, insisted Charles W. McMillion, assistant chief of the DPW’s Bureau of Solid Waste.

City workers empty ordinary trash cans as many as three or four times a day during peak season in the summer, dodging tourists with their carts and trucks. DPW expects to empty the new compacting cans just once day, McMillion said.

And when the older cans overflow, it is not unusual for the trash to end up in the water or on the sidewalk, cluttering the promenade and serving as seagull bait.

“It will save man-hours,” McMillion said. “It’s less disruptive than us riding carts through there all the time and picking up the trash. And the trash is all inside – you don’t see it hanging out or blowing away.”

BigBelly users open a large gray drawer on the machine – similar to a mailbox — and put their trash inside.

The units have one-sixth horsepower compactor motors powered with solar-charged batteries. The cans sense when each of the two 26- gallon trash bins within are full, and use 1,250 pounds of force to compact the trash, leaving room for more.

A locked door on the lower front opens for access to the trash inside. At capacity, the garbage within the can weighs about 30 pounds.

The BigBellies – each dark green box is 50 inches tall and 2 feet wide, featuring gleaming silver solar panels on their back sides – are kinder to the eye than the older cans, as well, McMillion added.

“The cement ones were awkward,” he said. “They looked like flowerpots. And they’re old, beat up. Now we put the [BigBellies] there – it looks so much cleaner and so open.”

In September the city launched a pilot program with one unit installed near the aquarium.

The program was deemed successful, and in January the Board of Estimates approved an initiative to purchase 17 more units.

The cans don’t just save money, they’re environmentally friendly, keeping litter off the streets and reducing emissions from trash trucks, said Richard B. Kennelly, a spokesman for Needham, Mass.- based Seahorse Power Co. The 12-employee firm developed the BigBelly system and began selling it in 2004.

The company has about 60 customers and 350 machines in use in cities including Boston, Queens, N.Y., and Albuquerque.

Seahorse hopes Baltimore is just beginning its relationship with the BigBelly, said Kennelly.

“Our hope is over time the city will continue to find more areas [to] deploy the BigBelly,” he said.

“I’m in favor of it,” McMillion said of a possible expansion. “That’s something the department would have to discuss.”

Visitors finishing lunch outside the harbor’s Light Street Pavilion Wednesday paused for a moment at the BigBellies to inspect the instructional diagram on front before dropping their trash inside.

Florida resident Darren Hertz stood behind one unit, inspecting its solar panels.

“It’s impressive, the technology,” he said as a passersby loudly explained the BigBelly premise to her companions. “Everybody’s talking about it.”

(c) 2007 The Daily Record (Baltimore). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.