Some good news from North York: a number of the Megabins will be replaced with smaller sized receptacles. EUCAN’s monster garbage bin pilot project was rejected by city council in May 2006.
From the community newspaper the Town Crier [entire article]:
After discussions with the city, Eucan, the manufacturer of the seven-foot garbage Megabins, has agreed to put smaller-sized garbage bins back into production in order to replace the giant-sized receptacles.
But it could take months to manufacture them, said Rob Orpin, director of collections at the city’s solid waste management services.
“They are going to be replaced,” he said. “It’s just (that) a time frame of when they’re going to be replaced (is unknown). We’re waiting for that answer ourselves.”
The push to replace the Megabins with smaller ones came after several city councillors, including North York councillor Mike Feldman. voiced their displeasure with the bin and asked for them to be removed. The Megabin made their way onto local streets in Spring 2005 as a pilot project.
At first, Rolando Garcia, Eucan CEO, said there were no more of the smaller-sized bins available after they had been redistributed around the city. But a clause in their contract with the city ob-ligating them to replace the Megabins at councillors’ request convinced them to put more regular-sized bins into production.
8 comments
I noticed a non-descript white cube van hauling away the mega-bins on the ride in to work today along the Danforth. It sure gave me a good feeling inside, you guys must be feeling fantastic today! Congrats.
Actually, the blue plastic garbage bins they’ve been putting up in their place (not sure if its city wide) seem to be doing a much better job. They hold more garbage without the mess and without the ads. I’d hazard to think they could be manufactured with recycled plastics too.
Brent beat me to it, but I was just going to mention that they are coming down along the Danforth. The one near the Starbucks just west of Pape was removed a couple days ago. But on my way to work this morning the one at the corner of Pape was still there. I was starting to wonder if Starbucks had more influence on these matters…
The megabins don’t need to be replaced by other Eucan bins. This is a consistent fallacy whose reiteration benefits Eucan and enables some councillors to pretend there is no other choice but to retain the megabins.
“The megabins don’t need to be replaced by other Eucan bins.” Yes and no.
Yes, because the motion made at Council to give councillors the option to request they be removed included the stipulation that any Megabin that had been placed where a SilverBox had previously stood (about half of them) is to, when removed, be replaced by a SilverBox at Eucan’s expense. It is very unlikely that a motion to allow the option to remove the Megabins would have been approved by Council without this clause.
No, because the SilverBoxes are of course terrible and only marginally superior to the Megabins. So a lot of it’s a symbolic victory, really… getting those giant fuckers off the streets – but it still feels damn good.
Now we can finally have our party.
I also hated the megabins. That having been said, if they can make garbage bins the size of bus shelter ads anyway, could they not incorporate a garbage recepticle into a bus shelter to avoid situations like picture #3 where a sliver bin is sitting right next to a bush shelter and taking up valuable walking space?
I’m just asking.
I was part of a City -sponsored deisgn charette and heard many people suggest just that. I suggested it to the heads of Works when the monster bins were released.
Hrm… Well, who knows… maybe new council coming in on the whole street furniture issue will look at combined-use solutions. A combination bus shelter/trash bin/info map would be a useful thing.
Toronto definitely does not have enough info maps in its more densely populated areas. I was terribly impressed when I was in Montreal; there were maps stationed at intervals seemingly designed for the moment when I would forgot the information I learned from the last kiosk.