You know city cleaners are doing their jobs when you cruise around the neighborhood and notice that there aren’t any overflowing trash bins in sight. It’s either that, or they’ve upgraded their bins to the Big Belly, which is as futuristic as trash cans can get.
It has two main features that sets it apart from all other garbage cans. First of all, it uses solar energy to compact trash inside it (yes, that’s a solar panel that you see at the top.) Second, it’s got sensors that determine when the trash can is already full. Once it detects this, it then fires off an email to garbage collectors informing them that it’s time to pick up the trash.
One Big Belly costs about $7,000, so they definitely don’t come cheap. However, they offer pretty good returns. Take the city of Raleigh, for example. They replaced 32 traditional open-top trash cans with 10 Big Bellies along Fayetteville Street and pushed costs down from $40,000 to about $1,600. How’s that for impressive?
VIA [ Pop Up City ]
