Bigbelly Blog: Beyond the Bin

Worcester’s growing population of greedy gulls is being brought into line following Worcester City Council’s decision to trial 10 Bigbelly smart waste units’ ability to prevent seagull scavenging and increase litter capacity in city centre locations throughout the town.

Bigbelly’s Information & Communication Technology group is excited to take part in the upcoming Northeast DAS & Small Cell Association's NYC Summit on September 6, 2018.

"The reality is, downtown trash has been a big problem for a long time and this showed beneficial results almost immediately."

MILLBRAE, CA — In 2013, the City of Millbrae, in conjunction with South San Francisco Scavenger Company, launched a pilot program to see how effective Big Belly solar compacting trash cans would be in reducing trash overflows and staffing costs for high use trash cans throughout Millbrae's downtown. The results were overwhelmingly positive as the Bigbelly's held 10 times as much trash and significantly reduced the amount of staff time needed to empty and maintain them.

Solar Compacting Bins Fit More Waste; Only Need Collecting When FulL

Overflowing bins, vermin risks and shrinking resources are what prompted Derbyshire Dales Council to replace 115 litterbins with only 42 Bigbelly units - a decision that has since reduced unnecessary bin empties by up to 95% within some parts of the local authority.

Just across from the Canadian border and close in proximity to the iconic Niagara Falls... the Buffalo, New York community is one of the latest to adopt smart waste and recycling management with Bigbelly. The "vibrant village" of Elmwood describes itself as an "urban hot spot is home to Buffalo’s coolest coffee drinking, art loving foodies and fashionable creatives [...that...] was named one of the country’s 10 best neighborhoods and boasts some of the city’s most popular boutiques, bars and restaurants."

When you think about garbage bins locations in public spaces, certain areas immediately come to mind... Places such as sidewalks, plazas and squares, parks and picnic areas, trails and transit stops. These are all true across the globe! Waste bins are a key city infrastructure that have the opportunity to significantly enhance an environment and streetscape when a colorful, fun and smart solution is in place.  

The municipality of Alingsås, Sweden announced the installation of solar-powered and self-communicating smart bins. The units compress waste as it is thrown away, and notify when they are getting full. This way, the municipality will save on the number of collections and the barrels can be placed where they are most needed.

Dubrovnik, Croatia is continuing to modernize waste collection with Bigbelly. The city's waste disposal company "Čistoća" has expanded their Bigbelly smart waste and recycling system to now include more public areas of Dubrovnik, such as the historic core of Baja, Ploče and Uvala Lapad. Bigbelly is helping help them to keep public spaces clean and neat, while achieving huge savings in operating costs.

Bigbelly deployments are soaking up the sun along the French Riviera's Mediterranean coastline. As you walk along the hilly, medieval old town situated along the beautiful beach and filled with picturesque gardens in the Ville de Menton, look out for Bigbelly's smart, solar-powered waste compacting system sprinkling the streetscape to collect pedestrian waste. 

The Municipality of Södertälje, Sweden produced a fun summer-themed video featuring their forward-looking waste coordinator, Tomas. This city located ~20 miles outside of Stockholm uses the Bigbelly system to reduce litter in their public spaces and to offer Wi-Fi hotspot service to their constituents enjoying the spaces.