A mound of clementine peels. A pile of poop. Soiled napkins. A Target bag. A McDonald’s bag. Poop in a bag. An empty Coke bottle. An empty sugar packet. A flattened Jamba Juice cup. A white plastic retainer case. Half of a Fruity Pebbles cereal box. A green pear with one bite taken out.
This is just a small sampling of the litter found on a half-mile stretch of 10th Street in SoMa. You’ll find it on curbs, beneath trees and car tires, scattered along the sidewalk, and jammed between walls, windows, and doors.
Along that corridor, with its Costco, school, and church, are just two trash cans. On one recent Tuesday, they weren’t helpful.
At 10th and Mission streets, one of the city’s green, metal bins was overflowing with bottles, cans, and fast-food cups.
Further south, on Bryant Street, one of the Bigbelly bins wouldn’t open. A single green bag of dog poop lay on the ground.
The trash-can desert in SoMa is one of several identified in a Standard analysis of San Francisco’s infrastructure, which found pockets of the city, including Nob Hill and the Outer Sunset, bereft of bins.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” said resident Ivana Zivkovic. “Trash cans are an afterthought.”
Zivkovic said Nob Hill is particularly bad, specifically the area around Grace Cathedral and the Cable Car Museum. There, she often sees tourists walking around with cups of coffee and nowhere to dispose of them.
Then there’s the even more frustrating part: the disappearing cans. At Woh Hei Yuen Park in Chinatown, Zivkovic said she’s seen multiple cans go missing.
In the outer Sunset, resident Allie Raul noticed that a bin was removed late last year by a bus stop at 48th Avenue and Ortega Street. Raul said there are bags of garbage hanging on nearby fences and cigarette butts and bottles strewn about. She sent in a 311 request, asking that the city install another bin, but it was quickly rejected.
“Case Resolved | Not in Scope,” the 311 response states, according to a copy of the complaint.
“I walk my dog, and I usually avoid that block because it is so dirty,” said Raul. “Once a week, I’m picking up trash.”
San Francisco and trash cans have a controversial history. In 2007, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a surprising order: The city would reduce its trash can portfolio. Newsom argued that the number of bins per capita was the highest among big cities, and that residents and businesses were using them to illicitly dump household trash. At the time, there were 5,000 trash cans in the city, according to the Examiner.
Then came the infamous and puzzling project a couple of years ago to create a bespoke trash can that sparked headlines for its expensive price, an effort that was paused because of budget constraints.
Today, the Department of Public Works has nearly 3,000 trash cans. (San Francisco Recreation and Parks and the Port add approximately 1,400.) Recology services the Public Works cans at least once daily, though some in high-traffic areas are emptied as many as four times a day, according to the department.
The issue is top of mind for politicians. Mayor Daniel Lurie has promised a cleaner city after an election in which street conditions were mentioned at nearly every debate and speech. Newly elected District 3 Supervisor Danny Sauter, in his first piece of legislation this month, called for a hearing about trash cans and the decision-making behind their installation and removal.
“I personally knocked on 12,000 doors,” Sauter told The Standard about his campaign. “This was the thing that came up most.”
Behind the city’s trash can infrastructure is a Kafkaesque cycle of complaints, vandalism, homeless people rummaging through receptacles, overflowing bins, and more garbage than anyone can handle.
Public Works spokesperson Rachel Gordon said the city tries to maintain bins along commercial corridors and at transit stops, schools, and parks. San Francisco has 13,000 blocks, and it is not realistic to have a trash can on every corner, she said.
“We don’t have an infinite number of resources,” said Gordon, adding that the city has added trash cans in some areas — for example, the Mission — with no noticeable effect.
As for the disappearing bins, it’s a chicken-and-egg problem.
A bin will overflow with trash, neighbors will complain, the city takes it away, and neighbors complain again because there’s trash all over the ground. Gordon said the city has an enforcement team on the hunt for illegal dumpers and creates social media campaigns encouraging good behavior.
In the case of the missing can at 48th and Ortega, Gordon confirmed that the city determined not to replace the bin because of persistent dumping.
“It became more of a problem than a help,” Gordon wrote in an email. She is convinced that a mindset change needs to occur among residents, making public cleanliness a higher priority.
Sintana Vergara, an assistant professor of engineering at Swarthmore College and an expert in all things garbage, agrees.
“Once the norm has been set that you have overflowing trash cans, you’re in a difficult situation,” said Vergara. “It is an important opportunity to hit reset. We’ve got to rethink how we do this.”
But Sharon Christen, who lives near McCoppin Hub, thinks about it differently. She’s seen trash cans get plucked away in her neighborhood and now regularly sees waste being left in tree wells and bags of dog feces in the middle of the street.
“How are we going to encourage good behavior if there are no trash cans?” she asked. “When it looks like crap, and there’s trash everywhere, that’s not gonna encourage people to come here.”