Jeff Satwicz, a founder of Bigbelly, calls his product “the coolest trash cans in the world” — and they’re now being made right here in Massachusetts.
Bigbelly is hungry for your trash.
The Massachusetts company was the brainchild of four Olin and Babson college students about 20 years ago with a simple goal: to make communities cleaner and greener. Now the business is evolving.
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"The containers I’m leaning against here are the coolest trash cans in the world," said Jeff Satwicz, founder of Bigbelly.
You might say Satwicz, who is also the vice president of development for the company, makes a living by taking trash.
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"It's fully enclosed," he explained of his trash cans. "You can't see any of the waste inside. I can step on the foot pedal here and then deposit my trash inside the bin."
The bin on the Needham Town Common does more than meets the eye. There's a clue right on top.
"This is a solar-powered trash compactor," Satwicz said.
The sun charges a battery inside and compacts the waste on-site.
"This will hold the equivalent of 5 or 10 bins worth of waste out here. So in a busy park setting like this, it can really help keep tabs on overflowing bins and litter," Satwicz said.
The company has a suite of patented products all in the same enclosed style. Customers have more options than ever.
"We started off with the sort of traditional compacting containers. We've since added recycling containers. And most recently we've added pizza box containers," said Carys Lustig, director of public works in Needham.
The smart bins let clients know when the containers are getting full, so they can plan and modify their pickups.
"A city or town can reduce their collections by a great amount, up to 80%," Bigbelly President Brian Phillips said.
The town of Needham found another major benefit.
"We know that they do reduce illegal dumping. We know that they do tend to provide, a cleaner esthetic," Lustig said.
Bigbelly has 2,500 clients in 60 countries. Their biggest customer is the city of Philadelphia with more than 1,300 bins on the ground.
"Over the next 12 months, another approximately 1,500 to 2,000 will be put down," Phillips said.
With so much growth, Bigbelly made a big move, bringing manufacturing from Mexico to Massachusetts.
"We felt like that was going to give us the best quality control and the best cost of product," Satwicz said.
They plan to make up to 700 bins a month. They also manufacture in Germany. They are making some changes based on customer feedback.
"Eighty percent of the customers said, we buy Bigbelly because of how much better it makes our city, or a town," Phillips said. "And 20% are doing it for efficiency and productivity reasons."
"We're trying to make the world a more beautiful place, a cleaner place. And so it's a job that you can feel good at when you go home at the end of the day," Satwicz said.
Bigbelly hopes to double their output in the next few years. They've also expanded into smart composting bins for residential food waste collection.
