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Bin, Bin, Go Away, Don’t Come Back Another Day

By Ron Nurwisah, Boy Reporter

2006_6_29diebindie.jpg
Eucan’s Megabins (previously written about on Torontoist here) are like those zombies in the horror movies: when you think they’re dead they come back to life again and try to gnaw off your arm or nibble on your brain. Well, we’re happy to learn that the bins are dead for good. Council voted to give individual councillors final say on whether they want the bins removed in their ward.
So send an e-mail to your councillor if you want to see your streets free of Megabins, remember it’s an election year. Because like this irate citizen wrote, life really is too short for bad design.
Photo of scrawl on a minibin on College and Palmerston Grace taken by Boy Reporter.

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  • rek

    Email sent.

  • http://www.publicspace.ca/sidewalksale.htm Jonathan

    I’m so glad you got that picture, Ron. When I was at College and Grace two days ago, I went to see if the writing was still there and found that it had been sloppily sprayed over with a shade of gray paint that doesn’t quite match the colour of the bin. You can still kind of make out the words, though.

  • http://www.xrtions.com Gregory Durrell

    Ron – i am curious to know why you deem these bins bad design?

  • rek

    Gregory – I am curious to know what single redeeming design feature the bins have in your eyes.

  • http://www.boyreporter.ca Boy Reporter

    Well, the megabins are designed primarily for advertising use, if they weren’t why would there be an additional three and a half feet of space used only for ads. There aren’t too many eight feet tall Torontonians are there? The recycling/garbage/ashtray components are actually terribly designed and lead to greater amounts of cross contamination. They’re unsafe and block sightlines due to their size. The list goes on and on and on. As for the minibins…. they have many similar problems re: contamination.

  • rek

    They’re also illuminated, meaning you can’t escape them at night (and think of all the wasted electricity). They were even made their debut on a smog day. They were also designed to make the ads visible first and foremost, so the actual useage of the bins has been pushed to the narrow ends, which almost always means one side is at the curb!

  • Ryan

    Not to mention that, in regards to the bin in question, only one side is an ad. The other side is an ugly blank grey, not very attractive from the road. Also, a large part of this sidewalk in front of this bin is taken up by a wheelchair access ramp to the bank. Putting the bin there creates a bottleneck in pedestrian traffic. It’s hardly been thought out.