Learn the joy of trash

INVERNESS — They’re talkin’ trash on the streets of Inverness these days.

DAVE SIGLER/Chronicle

Bryant Johnson, municipal marketing manager for Waste Management, talks to city of Inverness officials about the green technology used in the new trash containers the city just put in the downtown area. Frank DiGiovanni, city manager of Inverness, and Cabot McBride, Inverness city councilman, look at the solar panels that charge a motorcycle battery to power a compactor. The new containers will allow the city to now empty the machine once or twice a week instead of daily like they now do, saving man hours.

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Last week, the city installed six BigBelly solar-powered trash-compacting receptacles downtown.

Who knew tossing your empty soda cans or sandwich wrappers could be so much fun — or so high-tech?

“They compact five times as much trash as a regular trash can, and they’re smart,” said Katie Cottrell, director of public works.

How smart are they?

When they get full and need to be emptied, they send an email via a website to let city employees know it’s time to come empty them.

“From the website, we can see all of the cans,” Cottrell said. “Before, we had city employees going out and checking them every day.”

Three of the receptacles are equipped with recycling bins for plastic, glass, paper and cans.

Features include:

+ Enclosed design to keep critters out and odor in.

+ Capacity of 180 gallons of waste.

+ A Harley-Davidson motorcycle chain and motorcycle battery run the compactor.

+ Solar panel made from the same material as the glass in a hockey rink (so it can deflect a speeding puck).

+ Shell made from recycled aluminum and plastic parts made from recycled car bumpers.

According to an MSNBC report, in 2009, the city of Philadelphia replaced 700 downtown trash cans with 500 of the high-tech solar compactors, cutting down collection trips by 75 percent.

Facing a $1.4 billion, five-year budget deficit, Philly officials estimated they would save $875,000 a year with the compactors.

The BigBellys can also be seen on the streets of San Antonio and Dallas, Texas; Fairfax, Va.; Boston’s Fenway Park; areas of Chicago and Baltimore — and now Inverness.

“We were going to have to refurbish the (existing) trash cans anyway,” said Ken Koch, Inverness director of development services. “They were getting pretty nasty.”

Chronicle reporter Nancy Kennedy can be reached at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com or (352) 564-2927.