I appreciate the efforts of OPW on picking up trash sloppy, uncaring people leave behind - I'm thinking we need more trashcans since staff can't work around the clock to do pick ups. I'm also disgusted with the cans that are regularly overturned by either homeless or deranged people in certain areas around the Lake - I thanked a park worker who was picking up overturned trash one morning a couple of weeks ago. I go around the Lake each weekday morning and it's tough to see all the left over trash from the weekend. At campsites people are advised to carry out what they bring in and they do this - perhaps it's time to ask park goers to do something like this in the city as well? This would help all of us enjoy our beautiful parks.

I think the problem is that the businesses that contribute to the problem need to do more to manage the problem. The biggest problem are areas outside Peets, Arizmendi and Starbucks. They should be taking more of an hand in this. Ive contacted Peets HQ on this but have yet to receive a response. Also, there really should be more effort made to provide appropriate recycling bins and cans. Most of this garbage qualifies for recycling. Other municipalities do this successfully.

You are absolutely correct - most of the toss-aways are food containers, bottles, cans, recyclable plastic water bottles (hate hate hate them) and cardboard/plastic coffee cups from high end coffee shops. In Germany and in Canada, there are 5 different trash containers in public spaces - many people would try to do the right thing if it was available to use.

Another alternative is to install Big Belly trash and/or recycling containers. They are solar-powered; compact the contents and will hold the equivalent of a 150 gallon trash can. They are already installed on MacArthur in the Dimond District and should be on the want list for the Lakeshore Business Improvement District. Here's a link to the Big Belly website: http://www.bigbelly.com/solutions/stations/bigbelly/

I didn't know about these. How do we get this added to the list ?
Thanks for the info.

Lynn,

The city doesn't have money in their budget to purchase these -- particularly since they are, as I remember, about $2,000 each. Funds would have to come from the community, from business owners or, in the case of Lakeshore, their BID. One other possibility would be to look for grant funding to pay at least a portion of the cost.

Thanks, Ken.
Do you have contact info (email) for the Lakeshore BID? I'd like to ask them to consider this, or other solutions, to the garbage and recycling problems on their district. Thanks again.

You can contact them through their website: http://www.lakeshoreoakland.com/