File this under “New uses for renewable energy that I bet nobody had thought of”.
I saw these in Chicago last month, but didn’t have time to investigate. This video helps.
More here.
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How many deniers will rubbish this? Sorry, but someone had to say it.
That’s brilliant! (Sorry). There are a lot of places in America and Europe where solar-powered trash cans would make a whole lot of sense
Frickin’ smart…
How smart is this? We have a perennial unemployment problem in our big cities and I’m just wondering how reducing trash pick-up from 17 times per week to 5 times per week is not going to simply exacerbate the unemployment and underemployment problems we face.
It seems that this overly complex solution may be creating more social problems than it solves in the long run.
Remember when Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in Memphis? He was there in support of striking sanitation workers who were demanding a living wage.
Who is fighting for the sanitation workers in Philadelphia who are facing imminent pink slips due to this solar-assisted “progress” with these machines most likely conceived of in a few hours of engineering drawings in a suburban office complex in the Beltway and then manufactured by slave labor in China, giving away all of the value of the transaction to non-tax-paying mulitnational corporations.
Here’s another angle for you to consider. While the sanitation workers were attending to a trash pickup route the likelihood of gangbangers, drug dealers, pimps and others to be flaunting their trades was curtailed due to observation and peer pressure. Now let’s take away the sanitation workers and watch the human cockroaches come out to play. Another aspect of the automation mania in America that works against our better interests.
Sometimes I despair at just how incapable Americans are at strategic planning. Or as my pappy used to say, “sometimes you go for results and instead you get consequences.”
I don’t think the idea here was to put sanitation workers out of a job, so much as to
save overstressed city budgets so that more people, — cops, teachers, social workers,
road crews, everybody, could keep their jobs and benefits – and so that cities can
continue to become more livable and human friendly.
The units are “assembled” in USA.
A bit of history, from their website:
“BigBelly Solar was founded in 2003 as Seahorse Power Company with a mission to reduce fossil fuel consumption through innovative new approaches to old problems. In the very early days of the company, founder Jim Poss investigated ambitious new approaches to geothermal power plants and offshore wind energy—the nexus of the original company name (horsepower from the sea). While walking down a Boston street one day and observing a trash vehicle in action – idling at a pick up point, blocking traffic, with smoke pouring out of its exhaust, while litter was still prevalent on the street – Poss was struck by the thought (the necessity, really) that there had to be a better way.”
As a job creation measure, having people driving around in giant trucks picking up garbage bins containing mostly air seems similar to the idea of creating jobs for glaziers by smashing windows.
Well, there will be a need for extra workers to maintain and diagnose issues with the units. I recall a quote from the Simpsons when Bart and Lisa graduated from military school.
“The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.”
Why not take away earthmovers and have everyone dig with spatulas? That should get unemployment down to zero.
Lots of places, incl America have need of serious infrastructure upgrades – plenty of other things for the sanitation guys to do.
I don’t know what workers paradise you live in where garbage pickup reduces crime; put another way, your streets may be free of trash but you are full of shit.
I hope you don’t refer to AGW proponents as “alarmists”…just sayin’.
I find the replies to my comment fascinating.
Some thoughts:
1) When you reduce trash collection from 17 to 5 times per week per location, you will unquestionably cut the staff size of the sanitation workforce. Unless the new and improved trash bins are manufactured inside the City of Philadelphia, we are trading off automation for jobs with the net result that the city’s citizens will be impoverished to the extent of wages lost and the city will have a net exit of its wealth to, most likely, foreign manufacturers.
2) Re: The backhoe vs. hand digging question: I am personally aware of a county in Texas where a local banker who served as county commissioner deliberately chose to hire 22 local laborers to do roadwork that could have been done by one contractor with a backhoe. This was accomplished at an equivalent cost to the county, but with the benefit of providing a meager income to 22 families who otherwise would have been on welfare or indigent. This is a real trade-off. Either our society finds ways to take care of the weakest among us, or else this society will become overwhelmed by the creation of unnecessary poverty while we automate ourselves into social inequality and insanity.
3) Re: AWG denialism — I’m baffled and amazed that anyone has such poor control of his logical faculties that he’d equate a concern with the least among us for a stance that is in denial of anthropogenic global warming. That is a breathtaking leap of logic, my friend.
I too have a concern for the needy among us. However, I was merely commenting on your choice of language. It was …..frantic…. to say the least, not to mention the fact you were trying to paint a doomsday-like scenario, sounding very much like an ‘alarmist’ of sorts. Martin Luther King, drug dealers, slave labor in China. But maybe you’re right, American society is going to crumble if we automate garbage pick-up and move to renewable energy sources. It will probably happen right after the sky falls.
See here for more info on Philly’s Big Belly : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e8Be9rq_C8&
Twenty-four staffers were re-assigned, not terminated.
One concern I have is vandalism – defacement or theft of the solar panel, or to the onboard electronics.
The unit is expensive, at nearly $4000 each but the payback is only 3 yrs.
If this catches on, I expect some areas to have much bigger units. Perhaps ones located to close to bus shelters with large roofs could have the panels on the shelters powering various things with buried power cables connected to the bins.
Public playgrounds & parks, campgrounds, etc – lots of possibilities