Square Garbage, Round Hole
Featuring New DSNY Mascots
The weather is warming up in New York, and you know what that means: it’s time to eat pizza in the park.
Last May the Central Park Conservancy (the non-profit organization responsible for the maintenance of Central Park) unveiled a new type of trash can specifically designed for pizza boxes. Apparently New Yorkers were having trouble fitting square garbage into a round hole.
"The traditional circular waste bins are simply not designed to accommodate the boxes,” explained Central Park Conservancy spokesperson Kat Brady.
The entire project seems as if it were suggested to poke fun at pizza-eating New Yorker stereotypes, but was then executed by someone who didn’t realize it was a joke.
Not to be outdone by the Central Park Conservancy, the Eric Adams administration quickly followed suit and rolled out nearly identical pizza box garbage cans at other parks cross the city at a price of $950 each as part of the Mayor’s war on rats.
The special pizza box garbage cans are alleged to be rat-proof somehow, even though they kind of look like they were designed specifically for rats to get inside.
"Pizza Rat will find no quarter in city parks soon enough, thanks to these pizza-ready trash cans," said Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for operations, in a bizarre statement that clearly was not reviewed by anybody.
I thought back to the Department of Sanitation’s mascots (recall our friends: Leif the lawn trimming bag, Scrappy the compost bin, Patty Paper, and our favorite, “Bobby” the bucket of generic recycling shit, all pictured below).
It only seemed fair that since we have a new type of trash receptacle, we also design a new mascot to represent it to the public.
Introducing Lil’ Frankie Pizza, the pizza box… box. Lil’ Frankie Pizza loves the Sopranos and is a DJ on the weekends.
One has to admire the genius of the new receptacles; I don’t know how the city survived before the invention of the pizza box garbage can. How were we not drowning in pizza boxes? It’s a “New York” solution to a uniquely “New York” problem.
I began thinking about other types of trash one finds in unusually high concentrations in New York City that might also require a unique type of trash container. If you’re like me, you immediately thought of flattened rat carcasses that often appear on busy streets around the city.
Now I’m just brainstorming here, but what about those boxes you put cards in at weddings?
They’re available on Amazon for the low price of $35.59, and the slot at the top is perfectly shaped given the flattened nature of the rodents.
The traditional circular waste bins are simply not designed to accommodate flattened rat carcasses, after all.
After several design iterations, we’re proud to introduce Ralph, the rodent carcass container.
Its slot is perfectly suited to the contours of the two-dimensional rodent, and its clear sides make it easy for sanitation officials to know when it’s full.
If we put such containers on street corners around the city, New Yorkers would finally have a place to deposit flattened rat carcasses, which has been a pervasive issue plaguing New Yorkers for as long as they have been eating pizza.