Subject: [NEXTEL-1] AP -"Berlin to Get Trash Cans That Can Talk"

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:35:32 -0500

Berlin to Get Trash Cans That Can Talk

Nov 20, 10:02 AM (ET)

By MATT DUEHOLM

BERLIN (AP) - Fed up with garbage-strewn streets? Berlin thinks it has 
found a solution - trash cans that say thank you.

Starting next spring, the German capital's trash service will build 
electronics into a handful of the city's 20,000 street-side 
wastebaskets that will allow them to speak or sing to the public, a 
spokesman said Thursday.

"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. The talking trash cans - powered by solar cells - are meant to 
show that Berlin is "a modern city with high-tech services, and that it 
is also very cosmopolitan," he added.

Making Berlin's visitors feel at home, some of the baskets will be 
programmed to say "Thank you" or "Merci" instead of "Danke," Mueller 
said. The talking wastebaskets will be installed at heavily visited 
sites such as the Reichstag building and the central Friedrichstrasse 
train station.

Still, the garbage cans will be silent after dark.

"Some people might feel uncomfortable if these things said something to 
them at night," Mueller said.

Instead, lights around the opening of the basket will glow green.

Mueller declined to say how much the project would cost or exactly how 
many baskets will be introduced next spring, but he said Berlin hopes 
to market the product in other German cities.

The capital decided to go ahead with the project after drawing a 
favorable response from passers-by when it tested a prototype last 
summer.

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