(Image: SPU)
The city is adding 34 artful trash and recycling cans to Capitol Hill streets as part of a citywide test hoped to address complaints about garbage along Seattle’s key neighborhood business strips.
The cans are also intended to be a celebration of “the most scenic and beautiful places” in the region with each displaying work from teen photography nonprofit Youth in Focus.
Seattle Public Utilities says the $1,400 a can pilot will “reduce litter in neighborhood business districts, reduce vandalism of cans, and discourage illegal dumping.” The cans will replace the city’s standard barred blue recycling and forest green trash receptacles already in place at the pilot locations.
Each new can will display a QR code you can use to report any issues with the specific receptacle.
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Trash on the sidewalks and streets of Capitol Hill’s busiest areas like Pike/Pine and Broadway has been a common complaint from business communities over the years.
One big change came in fall of 2016 when 100 dumpsters were pulled off the streets of Pike/Pine as part of a city-mandated program to improve safety in Capitol Hill’s core restaurant and nightlife area by moving the large metal containers out of the public right-of-way.
While the change has mostly stuck, it wasn’t all for the better. In the immediate wake of the change, the city scrambled to help clubs and bars in the area hit with massive trash and recycling bills as the new program shifted much of their waste to more frequent plastic bag pick-up.
Another lasting consequence: Even with more frequent pick-ups, removal can’t come quickly enough as plastic-bagged waste stacks up and can easily let loose with foul stenches — especially in the summer.
SPU says the new pilot will address a different issue around trash with the goal of helping to cut down on garbage left behind by people as they move about the neighborhood.
Capitol Hill is part of the first deployment of its new trash pilot this month along with the South Park and Alki neighborhoods. More cans will follow in Little Saigon, Othello, and Georgetown early next year.
A spokesperson tells CHS Capitol Hill’s $47,600 in new cans will be placed “in coming weeks” and said the budget is coming out of the city’s general fund.
The new cans on the Hill will be installed up and down Broadway, across Pike/Pine, and in a cluster on 15th Ave E.
Once installed, the city is taking feedback on the new receptacles at [email protected].
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I am all for attempts to improve the terrible trash can situation, but at least from the article, it’s unclear to me how the new ones will help; and worse, I’m skeptical that they incorporate a very good street-level understanding of how these things work in the wild.
How are they better?
Are these for recycling as well? (it doesn’t look like it?)
If not, where does recycling go?
Are there going to be more of them? Fewer of them?
Will they be collected more often than the current ones?
I love more photography, but everything quickly gets covered by graffiti;is there a plan to keep them free of graffiti?
Some other cities have very minimal trash receptacles with frequently-collected clear plastic bags that don’t attract other trash…
finally, regarding dumpsters: why are there still dumpsters in pike/pine if that program is still going? Specifically, there are dumpsters quasi-permanently on 10th and 11th between pike and union.
If anyone from the city is working on this program and would be willing to help clarify some of these questions, I’d love to know.
Maybe start by using some of that $50k to clean up the giant piles of trash at the encampment across from my apartment building and throughout the city.
This is local Democrats approach to most issues: spend and waste a bunch of tax money that does nothing to help solve the problem. In this case the euphemism might be “investing” in clean cities. And yes, Seattle is full of trash and filth. That’s what happens when you have a culture of littering, illegal dumping and leaf-blowing landscape debris into the streets to rot.
Your observation doesn’t seem to match reality and the amount of litterbugs in Seattle pales in comparison to pretty much any major city in the US. Also, you came out swinging against those darn Democrats, so I’m going to assume you’re a MyNorthwest
trollcomment section transplant who lives in eastern Washington and despises Seattle, despite never having visited it, just because the angry man on the TV/radio tells you to.Regardless, the simplest way to prevent littering is to provide ample garbage cans for people to throw their waste into.
wow, you got paul all figured out, dontcha?? his comment about the leafblowing debris into the street is one of my huge pet peeves, and I do actually live and work here on the hill, so I tend to believe him. Also, FO, get out of your DNC bubble sometime, lol! It might surprise you how many of your neighbors don’t care for Democrats (people on both the right and the left).
He is claiming the city is full of garbage. It clearly isn’t.
That’s quite the claim, considering partisan races across the city beg to differ.
Are you also a wayward MyNorthwest soul, having the see the that reality doesn’t match your comfy echo chamber?
The city is full of garbage. Maybe not in the single-family home part of Capitol hill, but Pike/Pine and Broadway are regularly lined with trash, poop, and syringes. If you don’t see that, then you must not walk your neighborhood very often.
I do regularly walk my neighborhood, especially the Pike/Pine corridor and your description does not match reality, not in SFH areas nor in the more dense commercial areas. It matches the musings of an anti-Seattle MyNorthwest reader who lives in Twisp and has never actually been to Seattle.
Does garbage exist on the streets of Seattle? Well sure, just as it does any major city in this country. It certainly doesn’t exist in the dystopian garbage dump sense that you are claiming.
Keep living in your fantasy world where everyone who disagrees with you lives in Eastern WA. BTW, just read the other comments here. Most agree the hill is full of trash and muck.
What I fail to comprehend is why you anti-Seattle people care so much about a city that you have zero association with, that you would visit a neighborhood blog for that city and hurl false realities that are easily disproven by walking outside.
Lol, what a waste. Almost sounds like a decision made by someone who doesn’t live on the hill–unfortunately we can’t have nice things here, so those art-covered trash cans will be covered in ugly graffiti the first week they are out. This dumb idea reminds me of the $70K “PacMan Park” parklet failure at Olive and Summit.
I have not observed much of a trash problem along Broadway (Pike-Pine is another matter). More prevalent are graffiti and old, trashy-looking posters.
Unless this change includes a recycling option, it’s a step backwards.
Really? Walk again and open your eyes. Trash vis everywhere. It’s disturbing and simply not nice.
I think there’s a number of these through out Seattle already. The problem with the blue ones is they get dug through and trash is thrown on the ground, it gets really disgusting around them. With these I think it prevents or at least discourages people from digging into them preventing the trash from coming out.
the problem is not the trash receptacle, but more so stems from the homeless population continually digging through the cans and tossing all the contents out and about. so basically as with all of Seattle’s inherent problems, point the finger directly at the homeless poulation.
This may be a quaint notion, but I remember back a million years ago when I grew up on the east coast seeing actual human beings on the street that had jobs (not glamorous, I know) picking up trash on streets, highways, etc – does that job not exist here?
I’m sure everyone will enjoy the beautiful photos on the trash cans in the first few days before they get covered in crappy graffiti.
This is such a ridiculously dumb Seattle response to the problem. The practical thing to do would be to simply increase the amount of trash cans in the area and frequency of trash pick up. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked for several blocks to find a garbage to throw something away, and then when I finally do find one, it’s overflowing with trash. I don’t need pretty pictures, I just need a freaking garbage can with room.