Seattle cuts back on trash cans in parks

Officials at Seattle's parks department want you to take home your sandwich wrappers, your apple cores and plastic forks, dirty diapers and cracked Frisbees and water bottles. Take them home, and put them in your trash can, because Seattle is cutting back.

Seattle is converting more parks to "pack it out" parks, with no trash cans, in a budget-cutting move the city hopes will morph into an all-out culture shift.

The concept isn't new. The city quietly started removing trash cans in 2001, eventually ending trash service at 25 of the city's more than 400 parks.

In 2008 alone, the city removed about 350 garbage cans across the system, and "no one even noticed," parks spokeswoman Dewey Potter said.

But that's because most were removed gradually from little-used parks and small neighborhood parks.

This year, in response to a midyear city budget crisis, the parks department planned to save about $160,000 by removing 400 more — some from well-used parks. The city is trying to leave cans in picnic areas.

Cutting down on trash cans is part of a larger effort to develop a more efficient maintenance program in the city parks system. It saves the city from having to send workers to empty cans.

In the southeastern corner of Volunteer Park, cans "just vanished overnight," said Steve Rovig, who lives near the park. After nice weather a couple of weekends ago, the can at a nearby bus stop was overflowing from park users' trash, he said.

"When you invite people through picnic tables and nice facilities ... I just don't think you can really expect them to pack out a lot of picnic supplies and dog waste and the like to take home and put in their own garbage cans," Rovig said.

He complained to the city, and one of the cans has been put back.

In hindsight, Potter said park crews "may have responded a little bit too zealously" by taking out so many cans at the large and well-used urban park.

"Obviously, we don't want trash to be piled up," she said. "It's going to be sort of trial and error for a while, I think."

While trash cans are disappearing, the city is adding recycling containers. The department put 120 recycling containers at parks in Southeast and West Seattle parks late last year. Workers now are spreading the containers across the rest of the city.

The city also is experimenting with a $4,000 trash can that uses solar power to compact trash. The cans don't have to be emptied as often, so they may reduce the cost of emptying trash cans. The parks department now has one along Alki Beach.

Seattle Public Utilities is trying out a couple of solar compacting trash cans downtown, as is the Metropolitan Improvement District downtown. The downtown group is planning to buy 20 additional cans to place along Third Avenue this summer.

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com