How metroSTOR Outdoor Trash Enclosures Can Help Make Neighborhoods Safer, Cleaner & Greener
A neighborhood that is safer, cleaner, greener helps to instil a sense of pride from residents, encouraging them to respect their surroundings, take ownership of public spaces, and engage with the local community, with resulting benefits like more vibrant surroundings and a healthier local economy.
Providing well-designed, effective, and secure waste & recycling infrastructure that meets residential needs and promotes good, sustainable practice is key, helping to reduce the cost factor involved in cleaning up the streets, and reduce the need to impose fines which can have limited impact and are often difficult to enforce.
In multi-family and downtown neighborhoods, residents are often restricted from sufficient space to store all the trash they produce between collections. With many public spaces designed around ease of access by car and to facilitate through traffic, with the narrow streets and sidewalks already occupied with competing demands for car parking and unloading space for local businesses.
Negative behavior and improper disposal practice then often occurs because of these shortcomings. If the communal deposit point is treated as more of an afterthought and exists in a difficult to access location with a mound of side waste lying around it, individuals are likely to be encouraged to add to this. An untidy and unhygienic environment then tends to attract more side waste and illegal dumping, and things can quickly spiral out of control.
The solution of providing multiple roll-out carts is ideal for more rural neighborhoods and single-family households, however, applying this solution to more populated neighborhoods would only create new issues, obstructing the sidewalk, increasing fire risk, and doing little to improve the visual appearance of the environment.
To make neighborhoods safer, cleaner, and greener, a system needs to have an effective framework in place that considers specific elements to help deliver solutions that address waste diversion, including:
Well-designed trash enclosure systems that are both informative and user-friendly are central to encouraging positive user-behavior. All product design at metroSTOR is informed by this 5C methodology framework, helping to define collection points for waste and recycling and bringing significant improvements to neighborhood quality of life.
metroSTOR outdoor trash enclosures optimize storage capacity and encourage sustainable practice within a given footprint on the street or sidewalk. Units are designed to be recognizable and inviting for use, enabling them to be located more prominently and helping residents dispose of their trash in a convenient location.
By enclosing trash and recycling containers within an attractive facade that reduces visual impact on the streetscene, metroSTOR outdoor trash enclosures prevent wind-blown litter from escaping and covering the streets, while the use of restricted apertures enables users to place trash and recyclables directly into the container without the need to unlock and open large access doors, helping to remove much of the motivation behind side waste and reducing opportunities for bulk deposits.
