Design competitions won’t solve your city’s problems

Illustration by Alyssa Nassner.

Written with Alissa Walker

At the end of last year, New York City’s sanitation department announced the winner of an 18-month competition to design a “next generation” litter basket. The winning design of the BetterBin contest is a nice-enough-looking metal-and-plastic receptacle by Group Design, intended to be lighter, more durable, and better defended against illegal dumping of household trash.

But if you walk the streets of New York City, you’ll see an array of trash can designs, from stylish to utilitarian, already competently gathering the city’s refuse. The real problem is not poorly designed trash cans making corners messy, but the adjacent sidewalks being blocked by piles of plastic bags awaiting curbside collection—a problem that might be better addressed by moving garbage out of pedestrian thoroughfares.

If local leaders truly want to get trash off the streets, they might give residents a better way to dispose of their household waste, including the many models made for sorting recyclables that are found on every corner in numerous European cities. They might also take a closer look at the city’s trash collection system, which has long suffered from corruption and safety problems. Can New York City’s litter be so different that no existing product or policy can address the mess? Does any city really need to reinvent the trash can?