BERLIN - Fed up with garbage-strewn streets, Berlin has devised a solution that it thinks might work - garbage cans that say thank you. Beginning next spring, the city's trash service will build electronics into some of the street-side trash cans that will let them speak or sing to the public.
"We want to encourage people in a nice, funny way to throw their trash in the baskets and not on the street," said the official, Bernd Mueller. They will be installed at heavily visited areas such as the Reichstag building. The wastebaskets will be silent after dark, however. "Some people might feel uncomfortable if these things said something to them at night," Mueller said. Instead, lights round the basket's opening will glow green. Mueller did not say how much the talking trash cans would cost or exactly how many baskets will be programmed.