Getting a handle on the Big Belly problem

Like a lot of eco-oriented people here, I was enthused about the Big Belly solar-compacting trash cans when the city of Philadelphia first put them on Broad Street last year. But that was before I actually had occasion - multiple occasions, in fact - to use one. Even as our paper looked into the phenomenon of these newfangled trash cans and gave it a thumbs-up, my attitude soured.

Not because I thought they didn't work as advertised, or that their placement on our streets represented some kind of fiscal boondoggle, but because unlike the regular trash cans, you have to touch them to use them (for throwing away trash, that is). In a follow-up post in April of this year, I said

having now spent many instances walking up to one with my hands full or otherwise not in the mood to touch a greasy handle in order to throw away some small piece of trash, I gotta ask: Why is the recycling portion of these double units a simple hole to toss into while the trash part requires several hydraulic-oriented movements to accomplish? Seems to me that making throwing trash away easier, rather than harder, would be a boon to a city that's launched multiple anti-litter campaigns and still finds trash lying around all over town.

By May, I found other people speaking out about the handles. One of the most eloquent was WYSP's Spike Eskin, who explained, in a popular blog item that month entitled "Philadelphia's Solar-Powered Trash Cans are Gross":

I don't want to touch trash cans IN MY OWN HOUSE, much less on the street. Something tells me, if you can invent a solar powered trash compactor, someone can come up with a pedal that can allow us to open the trash cans without touching them.

Finally, today it emerged that - in addition to the questionable design of their user interface - the Big Belly trash cans don't work as advertised and their placement on our streets represents some kind of fiscal boondoggle, according to Controller Alan Butkovitz.

Wow. That in itself is something to get your head around, but more importantly, as Philly Weekly recounts,

Our editor's response to the news? "I hate those trash cans. They have handles that aren't automatic and people are forced to touch them. Which is utterly disgusting."

The controller seemed to agree. "Requiring citizens to grasp a possible germ-infested unsanitary handle to dispose of trash may not encourage use of these trash receptacles," the report said.

While I'm not enough of a trash-technology expert to weigh in on what can be done on our city's apparently ill-considered purchase of these trash cans, as a user of same I can only hope we're seeing a groundswell against those handles.

UPDATE 7/13: Here's the Page One story from today's Daily News on the Controller's report. Amazingly they ignored the key issue - the handles! I guess they had to save something for a follow-up...

UPDATE 7/14: Now the Daily News Editorial Board weighs in, blasting Butkovitz for grandstanding - but they also ignore the key issue here! Won't somebody think of the handles???