A city with about 8.4 million residents will accumulate a lot of garbage. Add thousands of visitors who pitch in their own trash and New York City has a considerable waste problem. The presence of sturdy recycling bins is then both welcome and necessary to help keep the streets clutter-free.

But what if the heavy-duty recycling bins could do more — like serve as wireless hotspots? For a city like New York that is always on the go, this could be a promising idea.

Bigbelly, a Massachusetts-based waste management company that manufactures solar-powered "smart" bins, is aiming to turn its 170 containers in downtown Manhattan into wireless hotspots. Each smart bin contains a chip that detects when it's full, and then informs city trash collectors to pick it up.

Together with New York's Downtown Alliance, Bigbelly installed Wi-Fi units inside two of their bins, turning them into hotspots. The upgraded bins were then tested, operating for a few hours a day to measure signal quality and the number of people who could successfully connect to the network. So far, the results are promising: even though the Wi-Fi units were inside the bins, signal quality was not compromised. 

Aside from the ability to provide wireless Internet connection, the bins also have the potential to collect data on waste management that can help the city government make changes and improvements that might be needed. The bins may be used in the future to display warnings and public service announcements.

"We are a smart solar-powered, connected technology platform that is literally sitting in the streets of New York. We are exactly where the people are," said Leila Dillon, Bigbelly's vice president of global marketing. 

The project seems ambitious, but since initial testing shows that the bins are able to provide a bandwidth of 50 to 75 megabits per second, the company is planning further pilot tests in hopes of securing sponsorships and grants to expand the project city-wide. With this innovative idea taking hold, tourists may one day be able to share their exciting New York City adventures with the world via garbage bin.

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