S.F.’s plan for new trash cans might land on the scrap heap
After five years of debates, studies, surveys, hearings, prototypes and test runs, the process to replace San Francisco’s trash cans with bespoke models just hit another delay: costs. San Francisco Public Works has paused its quest to deploy new bespoke trash cans across the city amid a looming budget deficit, the department told the Chronicle on Friday.
The department, which has spent more than half a million dollars on the project, said in a statement Friday that it’s moving forward with the new trash can — the Slim Silhouette design, which won in a three-way contest in 2022 — but that “the procurement may be put on hold because of the city’s significant budget shortfall projections.”
The statement says that the city is “in the midst of the budget process” and that Mayor London Breed has asked all departments to look for significant savings of at least 10%.
“At this point, everything is on the table,” Public Works spokesperson Beth Rubenstein said, adding that the agency has held off on issuing a request for proposals “because of the projected budget shortfall and the current budget process.”
The update from Public Works comes nearly a year after the department announced it had decided on the Slim Silhouette to replace aging green trash cans the city has been using since 1993. Those trash cans have long been criticized for often being soiled, filled to the brim with garbage or, paradoxically, making street corners dirtier.
To replace the cans, San Francisco spent an eye-popping $537,000 to test three prototypes. The cost was later lowered to $400,000, and after many tests, a final prototype was selected. The city has still spent more than $500,000 on the entire effort, though updated costs were not immediately available.
In summer 2022, the city deployed six custom trash can models across the city, giving residents a chance to weigh in on their favorite design. Aside from a slight hiccup in May when officials in the Civic Design Review Committee put the process on hold because of skepticism about the new design’s effectiveness, Public Works has been mum on its plans for finding a manufacturer and rolling out the sleek, silver cans. The department estimated in 2022 that the 3,000 cans would be ready in 2023.
Now that the project is further delayed, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said the city should scrap the new cans altogether. He urges the department to once again consider off-the-shelf trash cans for San Francisco. “This entire mission was driven by some narcissistic San Francisco exceptionalism that was always too costly,” Peskin said. “The whole thing is absurd. It’s time to stick that whole thing in the trash. Let’s not throw more good money after bad.” Breed delivered the cost-saving instructions to departments at a time when San Francisco’s economic recovery has been slow, and as the city continues to deal with the effects of work-from-home on the Financial District and the shuttering of downtown businesses and retailers. Breed told her departments to submit their potential cuts by Feb. 21.
Breed did not ask Public Works to specifically scrap the trash can project, the mayor’s office told the Chronicle on Friday. However, the mayor did ask departments to revisit their budgets “to find and propose reductions for consideration, which hasn’t happened yet.”
Asked how the mayor feels about halting the project after more than five years of planning and hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hole, the mayor’s office said “the process is underway and those decisions haven’t been made yet.”
The city first began to look for a new trash can design in 2018 when then-Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru — who is in prison for corruption — urged the city to work on new custom-made trash cans after rejecting the use of the Bigbelly, many of which are deployed in Union Square and the Tenderloin.
The same year, Public Works entered into a two-year agreement with Alternate Choice LLC to provide the Renaissance cans, which critics say are easily broken and spill trash. Public Works has largely defended its yearslong process, arguing that the city needs a unique trash can design that is small enough to fit on its narrow sidewalks, large enough to hold a 32-gallon container and secure enough to prevent rummaging.
But the trash can odyssey has outraged many in city government, especially after it was revealed that each prototype cost $12,000 to $20,000 apiece. Economies of scale mean the final product would be far cheaper, but that didn’t stop then-Supervisor Matt Haney from exclaiming the costs were “ridiculous.”