"One man's trash. . . ."

There's a neighborhood in Santa Ana that locks up their trash cans, because they don't want scavengers going through their trash. For them, it seems to be primarily a matter of privacy.

Not mentioned in the article is the solid waste policy implication. State laws require localities to achieve a specific percentage of "diversion." It's calculated based on the tonnage of hauled waste that does NOT go to a landfill as a percentagee of the hauled waste that is sent to a landfill.

In other words, when someone goes into a blue bin and takes a recyclable item out, we eventually all end up paying higher "tipping" fees because we aren't "diverting" enough trash. [Removing a recyclable item out of the regular grey bin does not have this negative effect, although obviously we'd be better off if everything recyclable went into the blue bin rather than the grey bin].

I would not be surprised to see more of these locking bins appearing in other cities, as well as scavengers figuring out ways to defeat the locking mechanism.