During my first week on the Smith College campus, I was struck by the absence of outdoor trash cans. When I had something to throw out, there was nowhere to put it. I began to look for them, and after three weeks of searching, I only found a singular trash can outside of the bookstore — one that, as far as I could tell, wasn’t affiliated with the college.
This discovery begs the question: why are there no outdoor trash cans on a campus supposedly striving for sustainability? Despite my attempts to find an answer, the College’s website offered no clear explanation. I did discover that we have a “vision for a zero waste campus” focused on increasing recycling and composting, along with finding alternatives to decrease trash headed toward landfills. If this is the reason for the lack of outdoor trash cans, I would argue not having them doesn’t truly eliminate that landfill-bound waste; it just means it gets abandoned on the street instead of properly disposed of in designated bins. We have plenty of trash cans indoors, so it seems like a strange line to draw.
I came across a relevant case highlighted in a 2021 article by Mission Local about San Francisco’s initiative aiming to decrease outdoor trash cans in 2007. The movement was motivated by “the idea that public trash cans attract dumping,” with people using city cans to dispose of private trash instead of paying for personal trash removal.
No one in the houses at Smith is paying for trash removal, so the same logic couldn’t possibly be applied, but since “[the city] decided that the best way to reduce garbage in San Francisco was to get rid of [many: from 5000 to 3200] garbage cans,” the situation provides some useful insight. The article reported that removing trash cans noticeably increased littering, measured by calls complaining about litter and simply looking around. The streets now are covered with “everyday litter — cans, old meals, food wrappers — the kind of trash residents would normally toss in a receptacle.” SF News in 2017 reported that “now the city is returning cans to one busy [San Francisco] corridor, at a hefty price.”
The people at Smith are generally environmentally conscious, probably more so than the inhabitants of San Francisco, partly because we lack the anonymity of living in a large city and therefore hold each other accountable for environmental faux-pas like not bringing trash into a Smith building to dispose of. Consequently, there isn’t litter around most of campus.
But what about people who aren’t part of the College? They don’t have access to the trash cans in the buildings, so they don’t have access to trash cans at all. I frequently see trash in and around the public bus stop on campus, and never anywhere else around Smith. I figure there are probably many people who would throw out trash if there were a trash can that they could access nearby, but without one, they might be more inclined to litter.
In the bus stop shelter, there is even a space where a trash can could easily fit next to the bench, but there’s no can. There is, however, almost always trash there; it accumulates for a couple of days and then disappears. Either someone is going out and collecting it piece by piece, can by can, or the wind and the rain are displacing it further into campus or town.
Not only does the lack of trash cans encourage people to litter, it discourages people who want to help the situation by picking up the trash because there’s nowhere to put it. Several times I’ve been waiting for the bus, staring at the empty alcohol cans, paper plates and plastic cups with ever-souring liquid scattered about the stop and I’ve decided that I would take it upon myself to throw them out. Several times I’ve changed my mind because I can’t throw them out without crossing the street and going into the nearest building, potentially missing my bus.
We need outdoor trash cans. The truth is, we can still be environmentally conscious about it — each trash can can be accompanied by a recycling and compost bin, just like they are inside the buildings. Of course, I know that a trash can is more than a receptacle; it is a commitment to the consistent labor of taking the trash out, replacing the bag, paying someone to do this, etc., so all I’m really asking for is the solution to one persistent problem: a single trash-can-recycling duo by the bus stop to help decrease its persistent litter problem.
