PATERSON — Alex Soto walked right past one of Paterson’s new $4,700 solar-powered sidewalk trash compactors on 10th Avenue last Thursday afternoon and instead dumped his empty juice bottle in a conventional garbage can a few feet away.
Soto isn’t a big fan of the city’s new garbage gizmos — devices that require people to step on a pedal that opens a slot where folks can then insert their debris. Tossing trash into an open can is much easier, he said.
“You can’t even tell it’s a garbage can,” Soto said, nodding at the compactor, labeled with the word “Litter” in letters barely two inches large. “They have to put a bigger sign on it.”
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Over the past four weeks, Paterson installed 90 of the solar trash collectors on seven of the city’s busiest commercial corridors, including Broadway, Main and Market streets, and Union, Vreeland and 21st avenues.
Mayor Andre Sayegh’s administration paid a combined $423,000 for the devices, which are supposed to use solar power to compact the garbage inside and send alerts to Paterson’s department of public works when they are full and ready for pickup. Officials said the new compactors and alerts will improve efficiency for city employees.
“The administration is compiling data for the first month as we speak,” said Sayegh’s chief of staff, Habib Kader. “Many of the 90 cans have not needed to be emptied since installation.
“However there are a few that have to be dumped twice a week,” Kader added. “For example, cans situated on busy streets such as Broadway and Washington. It is a bus stop and there is very high foot traffic.”
Kader said the DPW employees who unload the solar trash containers also sweep streets for litter, remove dumping, fill pot holes, and empty traditional street trash cans.
A cleaner city or a waste of $423,000 for solar trash bins?
Sayegh has said that the new compactors — which bear his name in letters only somewhat smaller than the word “Litter” — will make Paterson a cleaner city.
But that wasn’t very evident along 10th Avenue the past two weeks.
At the corner of East 25th Street, a conventional trash can standing about 15 feet from one of the new solar devices overflowed with garbage last Thursday. Farther east along the sidewalk, garbage was scattered all along the curb, waiting to get picked up.
At the corner of East 23rd Street loomed another overflowing conventional garbage can near one of the new solar compactors.
“I think it’s a waste of money,” said Paterson resident Bobby Manson, when asked about the $4,700 trash collection devices.
Manson’s friend, Michael Chambers, agreed. Chambers said Paterson could have bought numerous more regular trash cans for what it spent on the solar compactors. Or, he said, the city could have hired additional public works employees.
Chambers, a city DPW laborer since 2012, said he doesn’t think the compactor at 10th Avenue and East 23rd Street needed to be emptied since it was installed.
Over in the middle of Paterson’s downtown business district on Main Street, city resident Brenda Jackson said she thought the new solar compactors “look very nice.” But, she added, “It remains to be seen if people are going to stop and put garbage in them.”
Stephen Lee, who often hangs around the corner of Main and Market streets, said he didn’t know what the compactors were when they were first installed a few weeks ago.
“To me, it looks like a MAC machine,” Lee said, referring to cash dispensers.
“We need to get our regular garbage cans back,” said John Fray, who was with Lee.
The two men, who were panhandling near a convenience store, were shocked when told each new garbage container cost $4,700.
“There’s a lot of other things they could do with that money, like help the homeless,” Fray said, visibly angry.
A downtown shopper who only gave her name as Sue said she liked the look of the new trash compactors. But she said she didn’t think they will bring much improvement to the city’s downtown, predicting few folks would go to the trouble of using the devices.
“That’s just the way people are,” said Sue, who has lived in Paterson since 1967.
Large flower planters became makeshift trash bins
The city’s downtown still bears the unsightly remnants of another beautification effort that went awry. More than six years ago, the city bought large circular planters for Main Street, so that colorful flowers could bloom along the commercial corridors.
But people in the downtown district quickly started using the planters as makeshift garbage receptacles. Now weeds are the only things growing in the planters, many of which are filled with debris. City workers empty the planters of garbage as part of their routes unloading filled trash cans.
Greater Paterson Chamber of Commerce Director Orlando Cruz said he recently asked the city’s DPW to remove the planters, and said he expects that to happen soon.
“They’ve been a nuisance forever,” Cruz said.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: New Paterson garbage cans aren't a hit with locals
