Here’s a look at San Francisco’s long and expensive trash project

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — San Francisco is considered one of the most beautiful cities in America. But sometimes beauty hides the beast that is the city’s bureaucracy.

For a large city, San Francisco has a pretty good number of trash cans.

But we have a problem. Trash tends to find its way onto city streets, further tarnishing San Francisco’s image.

“Like here, they clean up today and two minutes later someone’s going to dump the trash,” said a local merchant along the Van Ness corridor.

It has been found that the more people litter, the more it becomes a habit. They are desensitized.

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“Why can’t we just have a nice can in San Francisco, a nice wire basket like in other cities? We tried that in our pilot program and it didn’t work,” said Rachel Gordon, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Works in San Francisco.

The city then realized it needed some sort of “human-proof” trash can without aesthetics. But this is San Francisco, so it must be “different,” right?

The city was settled in a new elegant design.

That was two years ago. Here is part of the reason for the delay. Instead of choosing any design, Public Works decided to go the democratic route, asking residents to choose a favorite from several prototypes. Those “special” trash cans became another city pilot program, costing taxpayers $550,000.

“It’s a lot of money,” Gordon said. “The trash cans, once they’re in full mass production, won’t cost that much. We’re hoping they’ll cost around $3,000,” she said.

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The model that would cost 3000 dollars is called “Slim Silhouette”.

There’s one along the Embarcadero, across from the ferry building.

The new “sexy” cans are supposed to be graffiti resistant and hard to tamper with.

But we found that the trash had graffiti on it and someone had damaged it.

“It looks cool, beautiful, that’s it. We want a spacecraft to come back and get it,” said one local resident.

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Public Works says there will be some design changes and improvements, such as the ability to fit a used pizza box — right now, the opening isn’t big enough. They also want to make sure people can’t get into the recycling section so there’s no mess.

We asked what was wrong with the old green trash cans the city has had for years?

“The problem with the old ones is that we have a lot of trouble with people getting into the cans and digging and taking the junk out. We want to be able to have them so people can’t take the doors off .and break the locks as easily as they do now and, finally, we want to have something that’s a little bit aesthetically pleasing,” Gordon said.

Mind you, Public Works has yet to find a company to mass-produce them, so the cans won’t start rolling out until the summer of 2025 at the earliest. The city wants to buy 3,000 trash cans. Do the math: it’s $9 million.

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To clarify, the fee funding — previously collected by Recology — has already been set aside by Public Works to cover the cost of the cans.

“I voiced these concerns years ago. I said we just need a product available. They want to have something special. Regardless of the costs, we still don’t have the cans,” said Board President Aaron Peskin, who is running. against the incumbent mayor and has been critical of costs and delays.

Right now, Public Works has a more immediate problem. How to quickly replace 15 Bigbelly smart trash cans, like the one removed overnight from the North Beach neighborhood after local nonprofit North Beach Citizens terminated its contract with the company that provided them.

“Bigbelly is down on business. They’re not serving the cans well, they’re not serving the community well. They’re not taking care of them, they’re not maintaining them,” Peskin said.

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A dark mark left on the pavement is proof that they were once here.

Bigbelly did not return our calls for comment.

The Office of Economic and Workforce Development expressed its disappointment with Bigbelly, stating that such a move “would require a lot of coordination on the part of the city.”

For now, it looks like there won’t be any cans for the upcoming North Beach Festival. Attendees can take their trash home, but, of course, there’s always a way.