Solar trash cans to be scattered throughout Lodi

A robotic trash can seems more like a character on "The Jetsons" than something you would pass every day on a walk in the park or a trip Downtown.

But with federal stimulus dollars, Lodi hopes to scatter about 20 solar trash cans throughout town.

While they do not walk or talk, the robotic cans use solar power to compact garbage and also send a signal, similar to a text message, to a computer that lets city staff know when the cans need to be emptied.

The cans will cost the city about $3,500 each and will be paid for using $53,000 in stimulus money geared toward energy-efficient and green projects.

"We want to lean toward greener technology. ... We want our people working smarter, not harder," said Jim Rodems, interim parks and recreation director.

The city has not determined the exact number of cans it can buy, or whether it wants to focus all the cans in one park or spread them out among several, Rodems said. Staff will be working with the city's solid waste company, Waste Management, and the company wants to test at least one of the trash cans Downtown, Rodems said.

Rodems estimated that one solar can will replace three city trash cans.

The Massachusetts-based company BigBelly has sold the solar trash cans since 2003. The company has about 3,000 cans in 40 states and 20 countries, said Richard Kennelly, vice president of marketing.

In Philadelphia, all 700 of the trash cans lining Downtown's streets are solar. The city previously collected trash 17 times a week, but with the compacting trash cans, it is down to five times a week, Kennelly said.

Traditional city trash cans. (Jennifer M. Howell/News-Sentinel)

In tough budget times, Philadelphia has been able to redistribute employees to other tasks and save on gas, he said.

Environmentally, it reduces carbon emissions from trucks driving for trash pick up, Kennelly said. Also, once a person drops in a piece of trash, the can starts compacting. Because it is sealed, it prevents trash from overflowing or animals or vandals knocking the can over and scattering the trash.

While more than $3,000 a trash can might seem like a stiff price, Kennelly said cities are looking at the broader picture.

"Most people don't think too much about trash collection costs. We are working with city public works and environmental groups who are very well aware of the costs. ... It isn't just the trash can; it's part of your collection process," Kennelly said.

He said usually the cans pay for themselves in the first few years that the cities have them. In Philadelphia, the city saved $875,000 in the first year the cans were installed.

With budget constraints in Lodi, Rodems said it is helpful to have stimulus funds to provide the overhead for these type of projects.

"I think that we would take a look at anything that is cost-efficient that also has a green impact," Rodems said. "But getting into these projects takes a lot of capital, and we are capital challenged at the moment."

Can costs

A lack of up-front funds has prevented Ventura and Santa Cruz from adding more solar trash cans, city officials said.

Ventura was one of the first cities on the West Coast to put in the solar trash cans, said Joe Yahner, environmental services supervisor.

Stimulus projects at a glance

Here is the list of energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly projects the city will fund with $586,000 in federal stimulus money.

Electric Utility Department
— Energy efficient rebates — $50,000 to go into the utility's program to reward residents who make home improvements, including upgrading attic or ceiling insulation and installing thermal shield roofing materials, window tinting or a high-efficiency central air conditioner.
— Low-income refrigerator replacement — $50,000 to remove old, inefficient refrigerators and replace them with energy-saving ones.
— Lodi Cool the Earth — $25,000 for an educational outreach pilot program for K-6 students at schools. It will focus on ways to get students involved in energy and water conservation, renewable energy and sustainable living practices.
— Lodi Keep Your Cool — $25,000 to replace refrigeration door gaskets at restaurants, mini-markets and other small food and drink stores.
— Improve energy efficiency for tourist lodging —$48,000 to complete conservation measures, including lighting retrofits, room occupancy controls and central heating and air improvements, at hotels and motels.

Information Systems Division
— Update servers — $200,000 to replace 25 of the city of Lodi's server computers with eight high-efficiency computers.

Parks and Recreation Department, including Hutchins Street Square
— New Grape Bowl lighting — $100,000 to remove inefficient lights and replace them with lower wattage lamps.
— Solar-powered trash compactors — $53,000 to purchase and install 20 trash compacting garbage cans.
— Kofu Park community building upgrades — $20,000 to install a high-efficiency central heating and cooling system, dual-paned windows, door sweeps, weather-stripping and new attic insulation.
— Hutchins Street Square upgrades — Purchase and install a new energy management system to allow employees to operate the central heating and cooling system more efficiently on-site or remotely.

News-Sentinel staff

Solar compacting trash cans

Materials: Made of environmentally-friendly metal and plastic. All materials are recyclable.
Capacity: 32 gallons of compacted trash.
Manufacturers: BigBelly Solar Solid Waste Management System.
Cost: The city will probably pay about $3,500.
Lifetime: The average is eight years.

Traditional city trash cans

Materials: Made of concrete and metal.
Capacity: Concrete cans hold 27 gallons; metal cans hold 36 gallons.
Manufacturers: Hanson Products — concrete. Columbia Cascade — metal.
Cost: The last concrete one purchased 10 years ago cost $375. Cost for metal cans was not available.
Lifetime: The city has never had to replace a trash can because of age.

The city placed the can on one of their busiest street intersections, where previously trash had often overflowed into the storm drains. The city used to pick up trash at the corner five times a week, and now it is down to one or two times.

"If we had some funding source to buy more, we would definitely do it. The payback is there in three or four years," Yahner said.

The public has been curious about the can, especially when they notice the solar panels.

"It shows that you are a city that is green and cares about protecting the environment," Yahner said.

The city has had no trouble with the can being vandalized or needing any repairs, Yahner said.

The can's solar panels use a polycarbonate shield, which is the same material used in hockey rink and bulletproof glass, Kennelly said. The average life span is eight years, but he said most of the cans will last longer than that.

Because the can is a machine, Kennelly said people tend to treat it better. Los Angeles and New York have put them in rough neighborhoods, and he said the neighbors appreciate that the machines reduce litter and help in beautification of the neighborhoods.

Santa Cruz has had two cans for the past two years. The city's downtown crowd can be "rowdy," but the cans have only needed minor repairs, said Bob Nelson, superintendent of resource recovery.

He said the city bought the trash cans to go near a pizza shop and a movie theater that generated a large amount of bulky trash. It has reduced the city's pick up at these locations from several times a day to once a day.

Santa Cruz's redevelopment agency also purchased another trash can recently to be added downtown.

While it has reduced the amount of trash clean ups, Nelson said the city has not received significant savings, and that the cans are expensive.

With the last two cans, one of the problems is they did not also include recycling.

BigBelly's newer models have the option to come combined with recycling.

Another problem is the trash cans can be heavy for employees to lift. The bags have at times weighed 200 pounds.

When the cans are installed in Lodi, Rodems said the city will calculate the cost savings from using the cans and decide if it would be effective to install them in other areas of the city.

In total, the city has applied to receive $586,000 in green energy grants for 10 different projects, including new energy-efficient lights for the Grape Bowl and new refrigerators for low-income residents.

The federal government required the city to submit plans on how it intends to spend the money, which the council approved at a meeting in early June.

The city is at the end of the application process, and the money could arrive by the end of September.

Contact reporter Maggie Creamer at maggiec@lodinews.com or read her blog at www.lodinews.com/ blog/citybuzz.

Reader Feedback

LodiFreeThinker wrote on Sep 15, 2009 1:21 PM:

" This is outrageous.

I own a home in Lodi and pay taxes. Now I'm finding out that my trash collection bill is going up to include street cleanup and city trash collection. Something that my taxes use to pay for. Will my taxes go down now that Im paying for that on my trash bill? Fat chance.

Now this. My government is going to buy into an untested technology using more of my taxes. It looks as if this will increase the overall cost of trash pickup in the city, not decrease it.

So my question is, will I get to pay more for this on my trash bill or in my taxes? Im confused. "

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