EDITORIAL: Trashing San Francisco

A camel, the old saying goes, is a horse designed by committee. The lesson of that observation might also apply to San Francisco’s efforts to reinvent the humble trash can.

A year ago, we highlighted for readers how progressive politicians in the City by the Bay were prepared to shell out $20,000 for a more attractive garbage bin prototype that was supposed to be less susceptible to … let’s say, homeless intrusion. There were also complaints that many of the city’s 3,000 receptacles were in a perpetual state of overflow, creating a mess.

The irony is that, back in 2007, Gavin Newsom — then the city’s mayor, now the state’s governor — got rid of one-third of the city’s trash cans in a beautification effort.

A mere four years after this weighty project was initiated, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that six different designs are finally being tested on the city’s sidewalks, some costing as “little” as $12,000 apiece. Residents are being asked to use their smartphones to snap “a QR code of a trash can so you can complete an eight-item questionnaire on whether that trash can effectively did its duty as a trash can,” the alternative paper SFist reported last month.

The Chronicle reported that each model — bearing names such as Salt and Pepper, Slim Silhouette and BearSaver — will undergo a test run in two different locations. This pilot program will last 60 days and cost $537,000. The winning can, even when mass produced, is expected to cost as much as $3,000. But what’s a few bucks when you’re spending other people’s money?

“We need to have a trash can that works for the city of San Francisco,” city project manager Lisa Zhuo said in a video announcing the prototypes. “We’re trying to come up with one design. If this trash can is able to perform the way it’s designed, it’s going to save us in the long term.” Another local bureaucrat told The Associated Press, “We live in a beautiful city, and we want (the trash can) to be functional and cost-effective, but it needs to be beautiful.”

Alas, the AP reported last week that within just a few weeks of being put on the streets, several of the prototypes “have already been tagged with orange and white graffiti. Others already show the drip stains of inconsiderate coffee drinkers or have attracted dumping, with people leaving dilapidated bathroom cabinets and plastic bags full of empty wine bottles next to them.”

Is it back to the drawing board for city officials? Or is it time to turn their attention to expanding the city’s “poop patrol” team, which power washes sidewalks stained by human feces? The unintended and deleterious consequences of progressive government never cease.