San Francisco’s Trash Can Saga

As summarised in a report in SF Chronicle, that came out last month:

San Francisco Public Works famously decided no city in the world had ever placed a trash can on its sidewalks that would meet San Francisco’s exacting standards and designed three bespoke, wildly expensive prototypes just for us. It took nearly four years and $550,000 to get this far, but now they need our help.

They’re testing the fancy prototypes and three everyday, off-the-shelf varieties at locations around the city for the next two months. They want people to use their online maps to find the cans, test them out and use QR codes plastered on the sides to tell the department what they think.

With residents’ input, the department will settle on the winner. The idea is that more than 3,000 of them will land on city sidewalks sometime in 2023 in what must be the most complicated purchase of a trash can in human history.