Let's Talk "Dirty" Trash Cans
Talking dirty! How Swedish trash cans are encouraging citizens to throw their garbage correctly
In an attempt to discourage littering, the Swedish city of Malmo has installed two 'sexy' trash cans that responds in a sensual female voice with suggestive phrases.
The two 'sexy' trash cans have been installed on the Davidshallsbron Bridge in Malmo, Sweden. Image Courtesy: YouTube
This is what you call a trashy campaign!
The Swedish town of Malmo is taking dirty talk to a whole new level in an effort to clean up its streets.
What are we talking about? For those wondering, the town of Malmo has installed two trash cans programmed to respond to users with seductive audio messages like ‘Aaah that was really good’, ‘come back soon and do it again’ and ‘Mmmm, thank you’.
Talking trash
Trash cans with voices are not a new addition to Sweden’s third-largest city — Malmo. Earlier in 2017, the city council had purchased 18 talking trash cans.
These trash cans featured a male voice thanking people for disposing their garbage and barking out no-nonsense messages from the public bins.
During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, they also thanked depositors for adhering to social distancing regulations.
However, with changing times, the city department believed it needed a change and hence, the new sensual female voice.
Two new trash cans have been installed on the Davidshallsbron Bridge and when fed with garbage, it says: “Oh, right there, yes!”, “Come back soon and do that again!” and “Mmm, a bit more to the left next time.”
Marie Persson, section chief of Malmo’s roads department, told the Swedish paper the Sydsvenskan the trash cans were meant to give “a positive reinforcement to people who do the right thing, by giving them a laugh.”
“The sentences are part of the campaign’s intention to get more people to talk about the dirtiest thing there is: littering. The stuff that ends up in our streets, squares, and sea,” Persson was quoted as saying.
Persson added that the voice – which speaks in Swedish – belonged to a famous person, but did not want their identity to be revealed.
Sweden out of the dumps!
Sweden, a country of nine million people, is today known for its recycling and waste management. Only one per cent of Sweden’s trash is sent to landfills. By burning trash, another 52 per cent is converted into energy and the remaining 47 per cent gets recycled. The amount of energy generated from waste alone provides heating to one million homes and electricity to 250,000. (Snowflake's response: Egads, compare THIS to how we waste our waste in the U.S.)
By converting its waste into energy, Sweden has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 2.2 million tonnes a year. Between 1990 and 2006, carbon dioxide emissions went down by 34 per cent, and greenhouse gas emissions are projected to fall by 76 per cent by 2020, compared to levels in 1990.
Malmo — which is Sweden’s third biggest city — located in the southern part of the country has taken several steps to being environmentally friendly. In 2001, it launched the ‘Bo01 - City of Tomorrow’ project that saw the polluted, defunct shipyard in the city into a green, sustainable living district.
Under this project, all energy needs for homes, shops and office buildings in the area are met with renewable sources, with food waste converted to biogas to run local buses.
In February, Södertälje, a city not too far from Stockholm, announced that it was using the services of a company that trained crows to pick up cigarette butts they see on the street, and deposit them in a machine.
The method, it is believed, would cut down the cost of cigarette butt clean-up in the city by 75 per cent.
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