Monday, 9 February 2009
One of the problems that occurs when all children cycle to school is that they tend to drop litter. Here's a solution to the problem: a "blikvanger" or "can catcher". On routes used by a lot of children to get to school you find these litter bins for cyclists to throw their litter into without stopping.
This is an older style cyclists rubbish bin, using a net instead of a metal cone, on a route north of Assen. The opening is about a metre wide, and the cycle path is 2.5 m wide. It's on a popular rural school route.
You may have seen the first photo before. It comes from our page of photos of Dutch cycling infrastructure.
It also features on our article about how waste and recycling is dealt with in the Netherlands.
Update November 2009: This short piece in the local news paper about publicity surrounding an anti-litter campaign shows the size of these bins. The openings are a metre in diameter, so that even those with not such a good aim can get their litter into the bin while moving. If you're going to copy this initiative for your own city, you need to get the scale right !
This is one of those small things that makes a difference for cyclists.
The bin in the first photo can also be seen on Google Maps Streetview and it features in a video about school cycling in winter.