Delaney Hall

Studies show that when trash cans are visible, closely spaced, and well-maintained, people typically throw less litter on the ground.

But that is not really what Public Works found with their pilot in the Mission District.

I'm picturing you sort of out there, standing subtly off to the side, watching people at a bus stop, seeing someone drop a candy wrapper on the ground.

It's reminding me of my children.

I just watch them open a snack

and then just leave the trash on our floor.

What is the psychology behind that, where you're like, you know the bin is right there?

What do you think is going on?

Right.

It strikes me that there's something almost a little paradoxical about what you learned from that pilot, which is that more trash cans does not necessarily mean cleaner streets.

Why do you think that is?

Something I learned in this conversation with Rachel is that there is not one universal way that trash and trash cans work.

It's more like there are different cultures of trash.

One place that Rachel mentioned is Japan.

And even in very big and busy cities like Tokyo, there are very few public trash cans on the street.

This actually goes back to 1995 when cult members released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, killing more than a dozen people.

The attack led the country to remove trash cans from public places as a precautionary measure so that no one could hide anything in the bins.

The trash cans never really came back, but somehow Japan remains spotlessly clean.

There's now a cultural understanding that you keep your trash and then throw it away when you get home.

And even within the U.S., there seem to be different trash cultures here, too.