Delaney Hall

Recently, Roman headed across the bay from Oakland to San Francisco.

He is not in the city very much, only a couple times a month.

Roman took his pizza and he started walking.

And when he was done eating, he looked around for a trash can.

Because that's where people end up standing while they wait to cross the street and they might have something to throw away.

It makes sense.

But like he said, no trash cans in sight.

I don't mean to sound like Tucker Carlson.

But some parts of San Francisco can sometimes be a little bit dirty.

I'm Delaney Hall, and this is Service Request from 99% Invisible and Campside Media.

Each week, we take your burning questions about infrastructure and we investigate.

Today, our service request comes from my boss, Roman Mars, and it gets into seemingly small stuff like the mechanics of trash can design and placement and big stuff like city procurement processes and the politics of trash.

We're looking at how the trash cans in San Francisco actually work.

Today our guide is Rachel Gordon, the Director of Policy and Communications at San Francisco Public Works.

Public Works is one of the city's largest departments.

It's responsible for designing and building streets, planting trees, cleaning up graffiti, and keeping the city's buildings running.

They also install and maintain the city's public trash cans.

In addition to focusing on the busiest areas of the city and the neighborhoods with lots of dogs, the department also fields requests from 311 and from the District Board of Supervisors, which is San Francisco's version of a city council.

This was my first hint that the way trash cans work in San Francisco is not always straightforward.

Sometimes trash cans get placed and then pulled and then placed again.