Garbage and recycling bins in Montreal.Marcus Gee/The Globe and Mail
If you were in Montreal this spring, you might have seen a man of a certain age lurking about downtown streets and parks, taking pictures with his phone of garbage bins. Confession: Dear reader, it was me.
In the past few years I have become fascinated – my travelling companions might say obsessed – with how public trash bins look and work. Wherever I go, I snap pics of the good ones I see and add them to an iCloud folder called (cleverly) Bins. By now it includes samples from London, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Lisbon, Los Angeles and, yes, Montreal.
The question that troubles me is this: Why are the bins in my hometown, Toronto, so inferior? If all these other cities can figure out how to collect trash without uglifying the cityscape, why can’t we?
Garbage and recycling bins in Montreal.Marcus Gee/The Globe and Mail
The bins in Toronto parks are an atrocity. A few years ago, some whiz in the parks department decided it would be easier to collect the trash if it was deposited in those rolling plastic bins like the ones householders take out to the curb once a week. Then garbage workers could just come along and tip the bins mechanically into their vehicles.
Now the bins (dark grey for garbage, blue for recyclables) stand in just about all our parks, tethered to metal poles like hostages in a thriller. They look awful plopped amid the green lawns, gardens and playgrounds of Toronto’s typical public park.
Garbage and recycling bins in Toronto.Marcus Gee/The Globe and Mail
In the specialty parks that have appeared around the city in recent decades, they look plain ridiculous. The city has spent millions hiring fancy architects and landscapers to create an edgy, creative more urban kind of park, only to ruin the effect with hostage bins.
The bins on Toronto streets are a scandal, too. Some years ago the city inked a deal with a big company to supply it with its “street furniture,” including bus shelters and garbage bins, in return for the right to sell advertising.
The poorly designed bins soon started to fall apart. Residents posted pictures of them standing busted and overflowing on city sidewalks. A new generation of the bins is much better – sleeker and more solid. The city plans to install 1,000 of them by the end of the year in high-density areas. But why it took so long is a mystery.
Now, no one would say that bad trash bins are the biggest problem facing the city – not even me. But when it comes to making a place functional and livable, the little things matter. Trash bins are one of those things – water fountains and park washrooms are others – that Toronto simply can’t seem to get right.
On the basis of my in-depth amateur study, Montreal’s are far better. In one park I visited this spring, the bins are simple round buckets, like old-time garbage pails but wrapped with a cladding of warm blonde wood. Lovely.
Madrid’s solid and stylish sidewalk bins are marked with the city’s coat of arms. The handsome forest-green versions in Queen’s Park, London, look as if they could stop a tank.
Garbage and recycling bins in Madrid.Marcus Gee/The Globe and Mail
The busy city of Porto, Portugal, has an ingenious answer to the problem of perpetually overflowing street bins. They empty into big underground storage containers. Garbage trucks come along periodically to empty them. The sidewalk flips up like a hatch cover and, presto, the garbage is gone.
In a southern Spanish town I visited, a bin for pop cans and water bottles is shaped like a giant purple heart. In Portland, Oregon, colourful works by local artists decorate many sidewalk bins.
Some cities even use solar-powered, compacting bins. Because they crush the trash, they don’t have to be emptied as often.
Garbage bin in Queen’s Park in London.Marcus Gee/The Globe and Mail
Toronto is trying to catch up. Taking a bold step into the 21st-century, it is about to experiment with special sensors that tell collectors when bins are full. The “bin-sensor pilot program,” to take place this year, will test the system on 250 bins. For some reason, I am not optimistic.
One day, perhaps, we will close the litter-bin gap with the rest of the world. In the meantime, I am going to try to chill out and stop photographing every cool bin I see in every place I visit. I might even take a few snaps of castles and fountains instead. Wish me luck.