San Francisco’s Ongoing Trash Can Problem

There’s about one City trash can for every 291 San Franciscans

A picture of a ransacked trashcan in the Tenderloin. (Photo: Matt Haney via Twitter)

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t see several stray pieces of trash to either my left or right when leaving my apartment — never mind that a Public Works-maintained trash can sits less than fifty feet from the entrance gate. There’s also one straight across the street. There’s a third one up the block; this density of public trash cans, however, is rare in the TenderNob.

All of these bins are, more or less, in a constant state of fill, overflowing with remnants of urban life. My corner of San Francisco, like most nooks in and around Downtown, continues to swim in a sea of misplaced single-use plastics and Amazon packaging supplies.

Is it because there aren’t enough trash receptacles in San Francisco? Is the design cumbersome to use? Frankly, it’s because of both the former and the latter.

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