![]() Reporting trash and litter to Public Works through 311 They were picked by disgraced former Public Works director Mohammed Nuru, even though he was told they were ineffective by some supervisors, including Mirkarimi, according to him. Honey Mahogany, a legislative aide for Supervisor Matt Haney, called the current cans “renaissance trash cans,” meaning that they are easy to misuse. San Francisco is indeed in the process of choosing from a number of new designs.įor now, some say, the bins in San Francisco are easy to rummage through (both for rodents and humans), and difficult to tell whether or not they are for trash or recycling. “For starters,” Supervisor Ronen said, “we need more bins outside each of our parks – Garfield, Jose Coronado, Parque Ninos Unidos,” adding that she has “been advocating for more and better trash bins for District 9 for years.” ![]() Gordon says that if district supervisors want more cans, they will put more in, as long as the cans “will not cause more problems than they are helping.” Those along 24th Street, Mission Street, and Cesar Chavez are serviced a minimum of twice a day, seven days a week, according to Recology. Gordon says she believes the 38 new bins are still there.Īt present, San Francisco still has the 3,113 public trash cans it had after Newsom’s plan went into effect, compared to 4,500 in 2007. But, during the test period, service calls for litter patrol went from an average of 77 per month to 74 per month, and service requests for illegal dumping went from 70 a month to 61 a month after the program. There is no data on calls for overflowing cans. Looking at service requests from 12 months prior to the new cans and 12 months after, “We did see more calls for overflowing cans, but we didn’t see noticeably more complaints for services around litter,” said Rachel Gordon, the spokesperson for the Department of Public Works. Promises were made at the time to track whether “the additional receptacles result in less litter and fewer complaints” to 311, which came into existence in 2008. The “Yes We Can” pilot program in the Mission District was a direct response to the idea that more trash cans might mean less trash ending up on the sidewalk and streets. In April of 2017, Public Works, in partnership with Mayor Ed Lee and District Supervisor Hillary Ronen, installed 38 new garbage cans along the Mission Street corridor between 14th and Cesar Chavez streets. Public Works trash bin experiment of 2017 The failure of Newsom’s plan to solve the city’s trash problem has not gone unnoticed. Removing the baskets failed to “appreciably decrease litter,” according to the NYC Department of Sanitation. In fact, New York City similarly got rid of 223 trash bins in Harlem in 2008, when officials decided the bins attracted dumping. Other cities have come to the same conclusion. Anyone who has a dog knows that you have to walk at least a couple of blocks to find a trash receptacle.Īlthough the idea to rid a city of public trash bins to clean it up sounds counterintuitive, it is based on the idea that when a city has many public trash bins, people take advantage and use them for illegal dumping of household or business trash. Walk in San Francisco with trash in hand, and keep walking. In contrast, the abundance of litter baskets in Manhattan is readily apparent. “I thought it was counter-intuitive, but the administration was so insistent that this was an experiment we had to try.” “I was not in favor of taking away trash cans,” says Mirkarimi. They believed cans were becoming a marker for people to unload whatever they wanted.” According to Mirkarimi, city leaders believed that “trash cans become a magnet for more trash that exceeds the can itself. ![]() Ross Mirkarimi, the former sheriff, and supervisor of District 5 recalled having a meeting with Newsom and other high-ranking officials. But in 2007, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom decided that the best way to reduce garbage in San Francisco was to get rid of garbage cans. ![]() It used to be that the Mission and San Francisco had what most cities have: ubiquitous public litter cans. A public works employee loads trash that was left on the sidewalk into his truck in the Mission. It’s everyday litter - cans, old meals, food wrappers - the kind of trash residents would normally toss in a receptacle. “It gets disgusting.”īut it is not only human feces, which residents can always call 311 to clean up. “Clean streets and cleanliness is a basic human need,” Mayorga said. They clean it up, but the problem persists. Angel Mayorga, a 63-year-old resident who has lived in the Mission his whole life, also often uses the 311 application on his iPhone to send notices to San Francisco Public Works.
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