After having a nice dinner at Fonda, I wandered across the street and spotted the strangest looking trash cans:

New Solar Trash Compactors

While it might not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, it is able to compact gallons of trash with a single gulp.  The Big Belly Solar Trash Compactor is an on-site solar-powered trash compactor that is designed to cut public garbage collection emissions by up to 80 percent and operates for an entire day on the equivalent energy it takes to make a piece of toast.  Holding up to five times the volume of ordinary trash receptacles, this trash beast has a 150 gallon capacity and exerts 1,200 pounds of force. All of this is run purely from solar energy and using less than 5 watt hours per day.

Now maybe these have been around awhile, and I just haven’t noticed.  But kudos to the entity that brought these nifty big bellies into our dirty, little town.