Tallinn’s city government wants to replace the 30-year-old, pole-mounted trash bins with advertising spaces in public places with modern ones, which will cost the city a hefty amount, Postimees reports.
Prisma NET, the company that used to take care of the bins mounted on street lamp posts, utility poles and similar, informed the city late last year that it wants to exit the unprofitable business and is ready to sell its bins to the city. The city refused, and now the company is removing its bins, while the city is only planning a public procurement to purchase new containers for waste.
When asked why the city refused Prisma NET’s offer, Deputy Mayor Pärtel-Peeter Pere from the Reform Party says the city needs new, multi-section bins, which should not display any advertisements other than those related to the circular economy. While the private operator maintained the bins for free and even paid the city a certain amount, the new system will cost the city a seven-digit figure annually.
“We will order new trash bins that allow for separate collection, meaning that each bin will have three sections. This is required by Tallinn’s waste plan and waste management regulations,” Pere said.
Secondly, he says that the current number of bins, 3,650, is too high. More than 300 new bins will soon be installed at bus stops in the city center. So when Prisma NET’s 1,500 bins are removed, nothing bad should happen. Moreover, since the bins usually stand in pairs, two bins per post, in fact 750 bins are currently being removed.
“Officials have estimated that about 30 percent of the bins we currently have are actually necessary. How many and what kind of bins we will order will become clear in the near future. We have been preparing this procurement all summer,” Pere said.
Deputy Mayor Margot Roose, from the Estonia 200 party, seconded to her colleague, saying that there’s no point in the city government discussing whether not giving up the old bins would be cheaper or whether advertising revenue could offset the cost of waste management.
“We can indeed go on discussing whether people will drop their trash in the right bin on the street, but the Tallinn city council has passed a regulation that the city’s new trash bins must come with the sorting option. This decision has been made at the city’s level and it is our duty to implement it,” Roose told Postimees.
She added that other cities are also moving in the same direction. Commenting on business operators’ claims that most people in Tallinn will not dispose of their trash on the street observing the principle of separate collection, Roose said that one needs to start somewhere.
“The quality of waste will certainly be volatile at the beginning, and perhaps lower than for waste collected at places where people live, but we have to start somewhere. And many tourists are certainly used to this being an option. As for the financial side, that is still under discussion, but I understand that the city council has also adopted a regulation to reduce advertising pollution, which is for the city government to adhere to,” Roose added.
According to Pere, money will be necessary for both the purchase and installation of new trash bins. Subsequently, their regular emptying, which until now has been free for the city, will probably cost more than a million euros per year.
Source: BNS
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