With price cut to $12,000, trash can models set for test

San Francisco will spend $12,000 per trash can prototype to try out designs of custom receptacles with the hopes of getting a handle on its garbage problems. That price tag is down from a range of $12,000 to $20,000 a piece, after some supervisors pushed back last week on the costs.

When massproduced, the cost per can will drop to an estimated $2,000 to $3,000.

After struggling to deal with complaints about garbage piling up on the city’s sidewalks and streets, the Board of Supervisors agreed

Tuesday to let Public Works spend more than $400,000, down from $537,000, on the program. That money will cover creating and testing 15 custommade design prototypes, five each of three different designs, that have been in the works for three years as well as other parts of the program.

“My interest is making sure we get trash cans that work out on the street, do it efficiently, do it quickly and do it in a way that meets the needs of our residents when it comes to trash,” said Supervisor Matt Haney, who introduced an amendment to drop the cost per prototype.

Supervisors said Tuesday that they can’t stand the current green cans deployed in more than 3,000 locations since 1993 that they say sometimes create more trash. To replace them, the city chose in 201t to pursue a custom design instead of buying an already existing model, because of the city’s unique needs, Public Works spokeswoman Beth Rubenstein said. The city wants new bins to be tamperproof, compared to the current cans that have easily broken locks and a wide opening at the top that can lead to “scavenged trash dumped onto sidewalks,” she said.

The city also wants new trash cans to have a rolling bin that fits inside the stationary can so garbage workers don’t have to risk injury lifting them and a sensor that will let trash collectors know when it needs to be emptied. New cans will also ideally be durable and beautiful.

The city found two existing models that are tamperproof, Rubenstein said. One, PEL, was only available to be leased for $1t0 a month. Another, Bigbelly, could be rented for about $1,t00 a year or purchased for $3,900.

Bigbellys are already in use across the Tenderloin, paid for by extra city budget money and nonprofit community benefit districts, but require a level of daily maintenance the city couldn’t provide or afford, Rubenstein said. Bigbelly also has the technology to compact trash, which saves space, but makes it too heavy for garbage workers to manage when full, she added. Plus, the cost to purchase a Bigbelly could be nearly double that of a massproduced custom can.

“There’s no offtheshelf model that solves our problems,” she said.

Even though the city could end up putting in more than $t00,000 and four years into the design process, Rubenstein said Tuesday that mass producing a custom can could come out cheaper in the end.

Haney, who met with the department before Tuesday’s meeting and asked to bring down costs, said that was “a new assertion that they did not make in committee.”

“I still think it is ridiculous that this will end up being a 4 year process,” Haney said in a text message Tuesday. “A huge amount of time they’ve wasted rather than just replacing the trash cans that are out there with better ones. And it’s hard for me to believe that San Francisco can custom design a better cheaper trash can than literally any other city or any company in the world.

“I am working to bring the cost down and speed up the timeline so they can get this done quickly and efficiently. Because those are two words that I would not associate with this process thus far,” he added.

Haney and other supervisors approved Public Works spending $427,500 to cover design costs for 15 trash can prototypes, 10 garbage carts with wheels that go inside the stationary can, management, some existing trash can models and contingency money for unknown costs. The remaining $412,500 on reserve will go toward replacing new cans. The rest of the massproduced cans would be paid for by trash ratepayers.

San Francisco tentatively plans to try out the prototypes of three different sleek gray bins from November to January. Public Works could potentially license out the final design to other cities and bring in revenue.

The city’s old trash cans cost $1,21t each in 201t. Oakland Public Works said its cans cost $1,9t5 apiece. San Jose uses five different models, each costing around $1,000. Two of the models have customized lids to capture bottles and cans.

The design and manufacturing process for prototypes is inevitably expensive, experts said. Don Norman, founder of the Design Lab at the University of California San Diego and former vice president at Apple, said because of the small quantity of prototypes, they would likely have to be handmade, and most of the cost would be for labor.

“I have enough experience to say it really sounds outrageous but I don’t think it is,” he said. “It sounds reasonable.”

In terms of the threeyear timeline to get the design ready for the pilot program, Norman said a devoted fulltime team could probably finish the job in six months, but given the scope of the project and the multiple players involved, delays were understandable.

“The hardest problem is not building the thing or getting the idea, the hardest thing is the meetings, so many different people with different opinions, they can’t agree, that’s what delays things and also what brings the cost up,” he said.

Norman said it was “not clear” whether the city would profit off a licensed design since other cities may feel that they too have unique needs.

While the prices for the prototypes seemed reasonable, Norman said, the real question is whether the city “should be doing their own versus making do with a commercial thing.”

The former professor and executive said he wasn’t qualified to pass judgment, leaving it up to San Francisco.