Outdoor Trash Cans in the Home and Business
A Typical Outdoor Can
Outdoor trash cans roughly divide into two groups: the home variety and the business variety. It is, of course, more than possible to use a $2 basket in your restaurant or a $1000 Whitestone round top trash can/ash tray in your living room, but I don’t recommend it, as the former would do nothing positive for ambience and the latter would gut your bank account for the sake of interior decorating.
While outdoor trashcans intended for the home are generally utilitarian, emphasizing function over form as they spend most of their time in the garage, this is not the case for business trash cans. A metal trashcan a la Oscar the Grouch outside the main thoroughfare of your hotel would probably not be a sound investment.
So it is best, for business purposes, to spend more for classier, less smelly, less obtrusive outdoor trashcans. As smoking becomes more and more taboo and often illegal indoors, it may be a wise move to invest in a trash can with an attached sand urn for smokers to put their (cigarette) butts. These are available for around $200 to $1000, with requisite differences in aesthetics. $200 buys you a simple receptacle, while $1000 buys a heavy-duty, rounded trash can that almost resembles a piece of art.
Weight is also important in outdoor trashcans, especially for the more expensive varieties. If you leave anything outside all night long, even if it’s a trash can, you are running a risk of it getting taken. 100 pounds is an excellent disincentive for drunken theft; 7 pounds is not.
The last factor is size. You want your trash can’s size to correspond to your business’s needs. There’s no point in scrimping and saving on a small trash can if it means you have to hire an extra staff member to constantly empty it or risk losing more money in lost business as people walk past the fly-ridden, overflowing, smelly mess and decide to take their business elsewhere.
In conclusion, there are a number of factors that influence outdoor trash can choice, the basics of which this article has touched on. Like every business purchase, a seemingly simple outdoor trashcan choice has a number of factors at play, all of which must be considered.