91Ô­´´

Chow and the city say they’re on the way to fixing them. That would be good. Though we’ll all be forgiven, I hope, if we’re skeptical, and if we are impatient while this slow evolution is rolled out. 

Because oh, how low we have fallen. When I lived in Washington, D.C. from 2019-2022, and told people there I was from 91Ô­´´, they would always respond “91Ô­´´ is so clean!” And I would think, “How long has it been since you visited?” Because D.C. is a city that always looks like the sidewalks have just been power-washed, the lawns freshly manicured, the buildings so vibrant they must be painted monthly. And 91Ô­´´ is … well, not that, these days.

Once upon a time we were famous for being clean. There was an who had carefully dressed the set with prop litter before breaking for lunch, and returned from their meal to find a city garbage crew had scrubbed their location clean. Ha!

There was a , which could mean our cities’ roles have reversed entirely. Once, according to Peter Ustinov, we were “New York run by the Swiss.” Suddenly we’re more like “New York tended by the residents of Animal House.” 

Over the past decade and a half of penny-pinching, we’ve all observed, the city has shown a lot of signs of wear and tear resulting from trimmed budgets and postponed maintenance. But nowhere is the decline more visible than in the case of these sidewalk litter bins. Their constant disrepair, patent unsuitability for their only job, and perpetual overflowing state are more than just unsightly. They have seemed a core indicator of a city government that had given up on doing anything properly. 

How the heck did we get here? Well, funny story: In 2007, hoping to turn a cost item into a revenue source, the city You get what you pay for. If you wonder why so many of our bus shelters seem to function better as billboards than as protection from the elements, that’s why. And if you wonder why our trash bins look more like garbage than like something helping to dispose of it, that answer is the same. 

Those bins have underperformed even the most meagre expectations. They’ve been redesigned and replaced multiple times, yet each iteration still has holes too small to fit much litter in, are too flimsy to hold up without having their fronts or tops hang open (spilling crap into the street), are still emptied too infrequently to serve their purpose (leaving people to just pile garbage all around them on the sidewalk).

They have proven, over the years, very popular with wasps, however.

You can see why Chow would want to fix them. And why she’d want to get credit for fixing them. I’m just not sure the moment to give anyone credit has arrived just yet. 

At the announcement with Coun. Mike Colle beside her, Chow (already tested in a two-month pilot project) with wider openings to prevent clogs, an extra opening for nonrecyclable garbage so that they won’t overflow as fast, stronger materials and hinges to keep them from breaking and — importantly — sensors that detect when they are getting full and send up the bat-garbage-signal that collection is needed.

So why the skepticism? Well, this week alone, they’ll install FOUR! NEW! BINS!

If that doesn’t wow you, then know by the end of the year they plan to put out 1,000 in “high density areas,” covering about 10 per cent of the city’s total bins. And those “empty-me” sensors aren’t included — they’re part of a different pilot to be conducted on 250 bins. 

Is it a start? We live in hope. But it’s not time to pour one out (into the appropriate receptacle) for the old, unbeloved trash cans yet. After seeing so many “fixes” to this problem turn out to be garbage themselves, we’ll believe in progress when we see it. Or better yet, when we smell it.