I reviewed the $20k trash cans SF is testing. Here’s what I found
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
I wonder if this cost discrepancy is due to pork or too many middle managers.
Not even sure why the trash can needs a redesign. Will this increased cost ever give an ROI over a long enough enough time span? Or will some other bureaucrat decide they need to make a name for themselves by redesigning the trashcan in 15 years, and these will all end up in the landfill?
The cost "discrepancy" is due to cheap offshored mass manufacturing for most everything consumers buy, plus social media validating uninformed off-the-cuff opinions. $11,000 is about a month of a welder plus designer. Is it terribly hard to imagine that the process of building a prototype with a few refinements would take $11,000 worth of time? Frankly, based on experience with the cost of engineering time, that seems like a tiny project.
FTA:
> When mass-produced, the cost per can will drop to an estimated $2,000 to $3,000.
Keep in mind this is still likely using small-run domestic labor, which is "costly" (ie economically sustainable). Tractor implements have similar simplicity, similar inputs (metal plus welding), and finished good prices are similar.
If anything, US citizens need to be embarrassed that we've allowed our society to be hollowed out by disposable mass-produced crap and policy-deliberate inflation.
I'm sorry, but that is still embarrassing. If the U.S. still had a strong manufacturing base, these things would be trivial to produce cheaply. To start with, certain aspects of the design would be simplified to allow for easier production. Operations and tooling engineers could help with that process, but we barely have any engineers left with the required speciality. Next you'd find someone that can stamp out the blanks from sheet metal. But of course we don't have many places that deal with a lot of sheet metal and have the ability to retool cost effectively. In China, there are thousands of such places.
Employing individuals is cost prohibitive for other individuals (eg calling a plumber costs too damn much), which causes further centralization of the economy where only big business is able to stomach the cost of doing business (they're also well connected to the supply of newly printed money).
Also I would be surprised if relatively small runs of long lasting municipal fixtures could be "stamped out from sheet metal". This seems to be a bias towards disposable consumer crap talking.
Sorry, what policy is that? Are you talking about how the Federal Reserve targets 2% inflation? Every country does that. It's important that nominal prices increase. Otherwise, people just old on to their money and the economy slows down. If that's not the government policy you're talking about, or if you have an example of a country without inflation targets, I would like to see it.
> Also I would be surprised if relatively small runs of long lasting municipal fixtures could be "stamped out from sheet metal". This seems to be a bias towards disposable consumer crap talking.
Sheet metal is an amazing material. It lets a company focus on producing a high quality steel without worrying about how every consumer downstream will consume it. It also allows for highly efficient shape forming and stamping. The fins on the garbage can almost certain come from sheet metal. Airplanes and cars are made with sheet metal. It's probably one of the most important materials in modern manufacturing.
Specifically 2% inflation defined in terms of a consumer price index where the cost to produce manufactured goods is continually dropping. Draw a diagram of the feedback loop, and you'll see that the only way to make that target happen is for the cost of non-offshore-manufactured goods to increase much quicker than 2% to compensate.
Put another way, manufacturing was offshored with the idea it would lead to cheap prices, and then the Federal Reserve went and deliberately stopped those cheaper prices from happening. This left Americans with fewer jobs but also no increased economic power to make up for it.
> It's important that nominal prices increase. Otherwise, people just old on to their money and the economy slows down
I understand the orthodoxy, but the computing industry has had four decades of overwhelming deflation and has been quite vibrant the entire time.
Re: sheet metal, how much is the tooling cost to create a die for 1/4 inch steel? I don't have much experience, but at the relatively low quantity a municipality wants CNC plasma might still make more sense. That seems to be the case for tractor implements.
This is an interesting point I haven't thought of. Perhaps the reason it happens with the computer industry is that the utility of digitization is so high that the impetus to do the work now usually outweighs waiting for a cheaper price. Thanks for the insight, though. It has changed how I view this issue.
What's this "if?" I've worked my entire 30+ year engineering career for companies that manufactured things. From the 6-person company I started at to the $4bn corporation that owned 80% of their market, they've all been based on making things.
There's nothing wrong with the US manufacturing base. We just don't focus on low-margin consumer goods. Even the company I worked at which also did consumer electronics, farmed that part of their manufacturing to Viet Nam. Higher margin stuff was built here.
> The products we do require really advanced tooling, and the precision that you have to have, the tooling and working with the materials that we do are state of the art. And the tooling skill is very deep here. In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields.
Low-margin things used to be farmed out overseas due to cost. Now things are produced overseas because we lack the expertise locally.
Tooling engineering is a commodity thing, not a tech leadership thing.
Apple products are designed in the US, because the same problem, you couldn't find 1000 engineers able to design an iPhone all in one place anywhere else. Yes, the Tooling engineers are in the lower cost to manufacture countries we export the manufacturing to, but the designers of the product are in the US, bay area specifically. Often tunes tooling engineers assemble production lines, molding stations, etc. From components and tools designed and built in the US and Europe. I.e a tooling engineer will design an automated work cell with a robot arm and an injection molding machine. The robot and injection molding machine are designed and built by a us, Japanese or European company, and the rest is sourced locally and then assembled together.
"The city’s Department of Public Works famously decided no city in the world had ever placed a trash can on its sidewalks that would meet San Francisco’s exacting standards and designed three bespoke, wildly expensive prototypes just for us. It took nearly four years and $550,000 to get this far, but now they need our help."
This article is not very good, because it doesn't say what they are trying to do with the garbage cans. Is it making them harder to be damaged? To make it so people use the cans instead of throwing the garbage on the ground? To make it easy to service?
I would guess, the primary purpose is so they aren't damaged, but who knows.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...
These designs are all bad. The recycling space is uselessly small. The middle one won't accept an empty takeout container. The one on the right has moving parts that people need to touch to use. Most people don't want to touch a damned trashcan downtown, what are you even thinking?!
People are focused on the price, but that's the least of my concerns. All three prioritize form over function. But yeah, the bar & slat designs are needlessly many pieces that require a lot of damned work.
https://archive.ph/LC3PF/87a04d67bf1d6574004d2f931dc1085afe8...
I didn't realize this article was more than 10 months old.
It looks like the one on the right is foot-operated, which is cool for people of average height and two feet. I smell an ADA lawsuit, but at least most people wouldn't need to touch it with their hands. But it will encourage people to throw out their returnables, which leads to the question "why do so many people rifle the trash?"
In the Vancouver area, trash cans have a little ledge where you're supposed to put returnables. From what I can tell, there's a pretty high rate of participation. It keeps the valuables out of the trash, and it simplifies collection. I guess it flies in the face of the American culture of security and authority, but it's a simple fix that takes people's actual motivation into account and addresses it there. Because, unless those cans are guarded 24/7, somebody is going to figure out how to quickly jimmy them open and that knowledge will disseminate quickly.
The article really doesn't go into detail what's new here. Looks like it's trying to be graffiti-proof, perhaps other ways to be easy to maintain. Lots of things like this aren't always obvious. If you said it's $10-20k for a trash can (well, they did), that sounds silly, but there should be a reason these are being considered.
This is stupid. The people of San Fran should be reimbursed the million dollars this cost. By who, I don't know.
Here's a list of the requirements of these trashcans, mostly taken from here (https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/san-francisco-trash-c...):
- Durable: they can't be easily damaged due to physical force, rain, UV exposure, or even fire (if someone throws out a lit cigarette). These cans are expected to last 15-20 years
- They also shouldn't be easy to tip over
- They must be difficult for people and animals to get into
- They must be easy for public works to empty. The inner can can't be too heavy or not robust enough to contain the trash (32 gallons)
- The opening can't be too big to prevent people dumping large items into it
- These cans will also indicate when they're full via optical sensor (https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/27/san-franciscos-trash-...)
- They should look somewhat appealing (they're designed in Oakland).
- They must meet certain size restrictions due to the various widths of sidewalks in SF
- It must also have a recycling container on top that meets most of the above requirements of "people can't reach inside here"
In terms of "why are they so expensive": these cans are one-off prototypes. When they're mass produced, they will only be a bit more than the existing green cans ($1,218 vs $2,000) but with the goal of being much more durable and robust. Additionally, they're much less expensive than the "Bigbelly" cans that the city supervisors wanted to use. Fun fact: the city doesn't actually own those cans and they cost $3,000 per year to lease (!!!).
From what I can tell most cities don't have a custom design: they just use whatever commercially available thing is available. SF is hoping this design will be better than those, and that they will be able to sell the design to other cities. I'd love to see how other cities address this issue though... I know that Amsterdam has a fancy underground trash system!
Rubenstein from Public Works explained that in 2018, the department could not find a trash can that fulfilled an exacting list of features: a rolling inside can for easy emptying, a sensor to alert workers when a can is full, durability to withstand street life, and be tamper-proof.
And “obviously,” she added, “they needed to be aesthetic.”
It also hints at fraud, but I’m not sure that plays a big role in the eventual costs of these trash cans. As you mention, those “Bigbelly” cans aren’t cheaper ($3,900 a piece, according to that link, so about what these will end up costing)
Are the trash cans used in NYC, Chicago, Berlin, London or wherever good enough?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Ci...
Edited to say $50 not $10 per below comment.
You could have looked at some commercial supply catalogs and seen that trash cans used by businesses cost significantly more. You could have searched around and found that businesses and other institutions have significant costs for installation, maintenance, tracking, abuse, environmental factors, etc that require more substantial solutions to mitigate.
Instead, I'll summarize that into this rebuttal comment, and I may even convince you that a $10 trash can that goes next to your toilet [0] won't work as a city trash can. But it won't stop the next person from posting the exact same type of anti-enlightening comment and thinking it's insightful.
[0] These days it's $50 for a 44 gallon Brute, which will still get stolen or tip over in the wind.
Even nice fancy stainless steel things that are built better to withstand a city are very inexpensive when ordered in quantity from overseas. A good example is a shipping container. They cost about $2k to manufacture in China.
So, yes, I think a trash can should cost less to manufacture than a shipping container.
Source: https://www.quora.com/How-much-cost-to-make-a-new-shipping-c...
The reason you think this is overcomplicating things is that you haven't bothered to actually investigate the problem or attempts that have been made to solve it.
Before usually they had also metal ones that needed construction to mount in the ground, those current ones the trash workers can just metal ziptie to lampposts and if one breaks they have a new one in their car.
UK citizens need to start feeling embarrassed that we can no longer manufacture simple objects. Period. We buy all our crap from China. I'm so ashamed.