You may not think much of rubbish bins since they are simply containers to temporarily store waste away. However, they are actually essentials that play a part in maintaining hygiene and keeping the area clean.
Being a clean and green city, our streets are lined with dustbins to make throwing litter away convenient and to discourage disposing litter away carelessly on pavements and sidewalks. Similarly, rubbish bins are also essential in homes, shopping malls as well as offices for the same purpose – to maintain cleanliness in these areas.
When we talk about rubbish bins, the first image that comes to mind are the common green round bins found in every Singaporean street. However, there are many different types of rubbish bins of varying sizes, shapes and even type of waste it holds.
Depending on the area, there are four various kinds of commonly seen and used rubbish bins:
- Deskside bins
- Centralized bins
- Transportation bins
- Commercial bins
Let’s take a look closer into each of them and how they can used in your office.
Types of Rubbish Bins
Deskside Bins
As the name suggests, these dustbins are small bins that sit at each employees desk. They have a simple design, round in shape with an open top to easily throw away any small items around the desk.
Working at a messy desk has a major impact on productivity. It will not only cause In fact, most people waste nearly five hours a week looking for misplaced documents and items on their messy desks.
A deskside waste bin is designed to keep clutter where it should be: the trash. Some of the clutter includes waste paper and sticky-notes as well as used-up stationery. This clears up desk space for more important and essential items.
If you need to discard food wrappers or containers, you’ll probably want to suite these trash cans up with a garbage bag. This makes it easier to empty the can when the bin gets full. In order to buy garbage bags of the right size, you’ll need to know the measurements of your bins. If you’re not sure, it is always safer to go for bags that are slightly bigger.
When your deskside bins fill up, all that trash goes straight to your centralized trash cans, which is the next type of trash can that we will cover.
Centralized Bins
Centralized trash cans are used for consolidating and storing all the trash in your entire office. Not only will the deskside cans get emptied into them, bigger and bulkier trash ends up there as well.
For example, you might have a set of centralized trash cans in several main areas in the office such as the pantry, the bathrooms and along the reception for convenience. They are designed with a step-on foot pedal for the lids which make them ideal for sanitary use.
These bins are much bigger than deskside bins and can hold much more waste. This means they should always be lined with a garbage bag. Otherwise, flipping these bins over to dump them out would be a hassle.
Centralized Bins Outside the Office
Centralized trash cans are usually located in outdoor and public areas. They also come in many different shapes and forms.
As they are placed in common areas, they usually have a larger capacity. They are also commonly made of heavy-duty and durable plastic that will last in any kind of weather. For hygiene purposes and to keep outdoor areas clean, most of them come with covered lids. These lids can come in various forms as well. Attached with either a hood or a flap, the purpose of the lids is to keep litter in the bins and minimize spillage should they become full.
So you can find these dustbins in these places:
- Sidewalks
- Lobbies
- Hallways
- Shopping Malls
- Schools
And when these rubbish bins fill up, they are emptied into transportation bins. We will discussed more about them below.
Transportation Bins
These trash cans allow you to easily transport your trash from the centralized rubbish bin to the bigger commercial trash can. Transportation trash cans are shaped like giant carts, think a very big plastic wheelbarrow.
They have up to 660 litres of capacity so they will be able to carry multiple garbage bags of trash at a single time.
Usually a custodian will push a transportation rubbish bin through the office building, making a stop at each centralized bin. Here, they will change the bags, put the old, filled up bags on in the transportation can and replace them with new bags. Then they will proceed to the next centralized trash bin.
This makes it easy to get all your centralized trash out to the commercial bins at the same time. But before we talk about commercial trash cans…
Let’s Talk About Street Rubbish Bins First
These mobile garage bins are also commonly found at the foot of a residential block or at the back of an office building.
The closed lids here are essential so as to prevent pests and rodent from going through the trash. Mounted on four swivel castor wheels, this garage bin is portable and easily maneuverable.
Available in various colours, these bins are ideal for use as a recycling point. The colours allows colour-coding of different recyclable materials which makes it easy to sort trash and send them to their respective material recycling centres. Some of the mobile bins also have pre-pasted recycling stickers indicating which recyclable material goes to which coloured bin.
Depending on the size of your office building or worksite, you may not need to use a transportation bin at all. If you only have two or three centralized trash cans, it’ll probably be more efficient to carry them out to the next bin yourself.
Commercial Bins
These commercial rubbish bins will be the last collective stop for all types of trash before it gets picked up and taken away to be recycled or combusted.
You should avoid sending your trash to a landfill if at all possible. Play a part in being environmentally conscious and ensure that as much of your trash is getting recycled, combusted, or reused as possible.
Each of These Rubbish Bins Play a Part
Each of these rubbish bins plays an important role in keeping your office space clean.
Deskside trash cans keep litter and small forms of waste from piling up on your desk. Centralized trash cans are ideal as a rubbish bin for common areas or in the outdoors. Transportation trash cans allows consolidation of the trash in an area before transporting them to the commercial bins before being picked up by a waste collector truck.
Besides maintaining your waste and trash, it is equally important to take care of your rubbish bins as well to keep them clean and free from bacteria.
Maintaining Your Rubbish Bins
Bins, used both outside and inside, need to be maintained properly to ensure a clean and safe environment. Nothing depicts a dirty workspace more than overflowing trash cans and the lack of rubbish bins.
Here are a few things you can do to keep your rubbish bins from becoming a hazard.
Keep Them Covered
Lids should carry some weight and should be able to cover the bin tightly, especially for outside trash cans. If the lids can be easily knocked off, your run the risk of getting your bins raided by pests and insects. Some of them also come in the forms of flaps as covers.
Lids and covers also help prevent unpleasant odors from stinking up the area. Also, you wouldn’t want your bins to be filled up with water whenever it rains.
Use Garbage Bags
We’ve touched on this briefly already earlier – garbage bags help keep your rubbish bins clean. Trash that’s tightly tied in a garbage bag also hinders pests from going through your rubbish.
Make sure you don’t overfill the bag before you take it out. When these bags get too heavy, they can rip and leak waste into the bin, causing odors and attracting pests.
Don’t Let Your Trash Cans Overflow
)
Any trash that’s piled up around your rubbish bin can become a fire hazard. It can also attract unwanted pests into the building. Not only will you have to spend extra time cleaning up that trash eventually, you’ll also have to pay an exterminator to get rid of the bugs in the area.
Furthermore, having trash overflowing makes your workplace look and feel dirty. This creates an unpleasant working environment for your employees, which will make them feel uncomfortable. Therefore, maintaining your trash does affect the conditions of the workplace that you are in.
Wash Your Trash Cans
Trash cans that have been used for too long, have been spilled in, or are just generally dirty will start to smell over time. If there is ever a nasty stench filling up the air in the office, that would be a sign that you should give your trash cans a good wash. For rubbish bins with larger capacity, using a pressure washer would be more efficient.
Also, do make it a point to check your trash cans once in a while and ensure that they are no cracks or damages to it. If there are, it’s time to get a new one.
Finding the Right Rubbish Bins
Taking care of your office trash may be a more complicated process than you thought as but there are so many different trash cans for different purposes. However, it is important to find the right one to ensure a clean and neat working space.
If you’re looking for a few new trash cans, Sulo comes up as one of the most well-known brands around. You can find Sulo trash cans for your desk, your centralized bins, street cans, and even transportation bins.
Need help finding a trash can that’s right for you? Take a quick look at our store.
Stay connected