Urban Vancouver

When Cities Do Things Right: Recycling Rack

By Darren Barefoot on May 12, 2005 - 9:58am

I really like it when a city responds to its citizens, instead of forcing its citizens to change. One great example is that, for years, people were playing inline hockey on a public parking lot near English Bay. They'd set up a couple of milk crates as 'goals', and skate around. Eventually the city clued in that there was a demand for this, so they set up some concrete barricades and fencing as boards, and permanently fixed a couple of milk crates in appropriate locations. Voila--instant inline hockey rink. Cheap, cheerful and what the public wanted. Whenever I walk by, that space is in use.

Another is when the city pays attention to desire lines--the paths people make when they cut across an area instead of following the prescribed walkway. You see them all the time at universities. Yet another is this city of Victoria effort, which plasters tourist maps on the sides of otherwise unused switch boxes.

I'm digging this new recycyling rack. The city's recognized that the impoverished are going to dig through garbage cans to look for returnable cans and bottles. They've built a little rack (apologies for the crappy phone camera photo) that sits around the can that enables an exchange between the drinker and the needy:

• The can or bottle gets recycled, instead of thrown away.
• I don't know if this is an issue, but the can collector retains a little dignity by not having to root through the trash.
• The city stays cleaner, because rooting through the trash inevitably leaves some on the pavement.

I've never seen a can in the rack. I don't know if that means that it isn't used, or it's extremely well-used. It's in a very busy location (it's the only one I've seen--probably a pilot project), so I'm guessing the latter.

Of course, the longterm solution would be creating a society where people didn't feel they had to root through the trash for cans and bottles, but that's another story.