Dive Brief:

• Toronto’s public garbage bins, with their pedals and moving parts, are finally being replaced after more than 13,000 service requests were called into the city last year. The new bins, which slowly began rolling out in the downtown district in 2014 and will continue to pop up across the city, have no moving parts.
• Last year, there were about 1.4 calls for every one of the 9,094 bins. Their replacements should reduce that figure by 11%, according to Metro News.
• The new bins were brought in by Toronto’s street furniture program in partnership with Astral Media who in return gets advertising rights. The program is expected to generate over $17 million for the city in 2016. 

Dive Insight:

The old public bins were a headache for Toronto, as most residents called in for maintenance because the aging receptacles were filthy, although one-third of them had complaints of broken flaps and foot pedals.

The newly designed replacement is a fairly simple concept and fix. Meanwhile, there are companies coming up with rather advanced technologies and designs of trash cans that go way beyond newer, cleaner, and low-maintenance—from solar-powered receptacles to semi-underground containers.

Toronto residents will likely be happy enough with their clean, sleek, compact replacements. They are smaller, but have the same capacity as the problematic receptacles. So they will consume less space, and thus be easier to manage while presenting no obstacles on crowded city sidewalks.