Happy cheery painted trash cans for Coachella

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#Decor & Decorating#art#garbage#recycling

Annual music/art festival Coachella runs an annual competition for recycling bins, from which sprang this fab set of photos of artist Jacob Livengood’s submission.

RIGHT? Don’t trash bins normally belong to the waste collection company? Would it incur their wrath to do this to your own bin?

View more photos at Doodlers Anonymous.

About the Author: Cat Rocketship

I was the Managing Editor of Offbeat Home for a year and a half. I have a rich Internet life and also a pretty good real life. Hobbies include D&D, Twitter, and working on making our household more self-reliant. I also draw things.

Comments on Happy cheery painted trash cans for Coachella

  1. Love it! In my father-in-law’s neighborhood in England, I see lots of rubbish bins with the house number painted on, and a few with stickers and things. Maybe start small with the painting and expand when there are no complaints?

  2. This is awesome!

    I just looked up on my town’s website and apparently it’s a freaking CRIME to “vandalize” your trash bin. I hate my town sometimes.

  4. In the City of Atlanta trash bins belong to the city – and say so. But in unincorporated Dekalb County you have to provide your own. It’s wierd, because in our neighborhood whether you’re city or county varies from street to street. I’ve always been jealous of the “true” City of Atlanta folk with their big sturdy Herby-the-Curby-ies, but now I see an advantage to the fact that we own our bins. Maybe I’ll make painting them a weekend project with the boys sometime 🙂

  5. They have people paint the trash bins like that here in Saskatoon, SK (Canada) but just the ones downtown that people see. The ones in my back alley are still just black and unadorned. But it is pretty neat 🙂 I’m not sure how you sign up to do that, I guess you could call the city and ask? They let artists paint the utility boxes here too – we’re a pretty artsy place I guess!

  6. Regarding city property and trash bin art being a crime…

    I worked on a marketing campaign for when my old town introduced recycling bins. One of our PR ideas was to have a “decorate your bin” contest, especially since so many residents were complaining they were so BIG and UGLY.

    The city official told us it was against the law to deface the bins in any way, because they were city property.

    What was NOT against the law, however, was to do anything to them that was not defacing them or interfered with collection. I suggested we turn it into a contest for who could store it the most creatively! I thought people would made covers, painted boxes to keep them in, all kinds of things…but no suck luck. It was sad. There are ways around all rules if you look for them…

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