Nobody should have to reach into the trash.

Drop Empties builds the Deposit Rack. It is a tube that straps to a city litter basket. You drop your can in the top. Someone who needs it takes it from the bottom.

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01 The problem

The containers are already there. Getting to them means putting your hands in garbage.

Every day in New York, people called canners walk the same blocks you do. They collect bottles and cans for the deposit refund. Most of that work happens at the litter basket on the corner. The containers are in there, under the coffee cups and at the bottom of somebody's takeout bag.

The city already put a bin on almost every corner. It just never gave anyone a place to leave a can where the next person could pick it up without reaching in after it.

At first this might seem like a policy problem. However, it is a design problem first. Germany built a version of the answer and called it the Pfandring. It is a steel ring bolted to a public bin so bottles can be set down instead of thrown away. New York has nothing like it.

Because of this, the Deposit Rack is shaped for what actually gets thrown out here. It takes the 12 oz can and the 1 litre bottle, and it straps on instead of getting bolted down.

0DSNY street litter baskets across the five boroughs
0The year New York's Bottle Bill was signed. The deposit has never been raised since.
0Places on a city basket to set a can down for someone else

02 The object

The Deposit Rack.

Four anodised aluminium tubes chained by a single rail that straps to the outside of a standard city basket. You load it from the top and take from the bottom.

Isometric drawing of the Deposit Rack: four chained tubes strapped to a Ø670 city basket, dimensioned 700 mm tube, 1,000 mm to ground at the top and 300 mm at the bottom
TT-002 · rev C3 · quad

Production spec

Tube
Ø101.6 mm, 700 mm long
Wall
1.65 mm
Material
6061 aluminium, clear anodised
Rail
120 mm wide, powder-coated
Throat
Ø92 mm slot over each tube
Window
Bottom front, hemmed edges
Sight slot
40 mm wide, in each tube
Floor bars
Two, 15 mm up, so the bottom can stays liftable
Capacity
5 cans or 3 bottles per tube, 20 per basket
Height
1,000 mm to the mouth, 300 mm to the window
Overall
About 400 mm across
Mount
Two stainless bands, no drilling

It refuses trash by shape

The rail carries one Ø92 mm slot over each tube. It passes a can and a bottle. It turns away the coffee cup, the pizza box and the bag.

It doesn't touch the basket

Two flexible stainless bands wrap the existing bin. Nothing is drilled, welded or bolted into city property. Because of this, a pilot can be approved in a conversation instead of a two-year purchase.

Three plan diagrams showing the rail hinged to fit a Ø610 wire basket at 16.1°, a Ø670 basket at 14.8°, and a flat-sided box bin at 0°
One part, every bin. The rail is hinged at each joint and set once at install, so a wire basket, a round basket and a flat-sided bin all take the same rack.
Duo, Trio and Quad configurations: 2 tubes and 10 cans at 203 across, 3 tubes and 15 cans at 303, 4 tubes and 20 cans at 400
Same rail, two to four tubes. A narrow sidewalk takes a Duo. A busy corner takes the Quad.

03 How it works

Three motions.

01
A hand dropping an aluminium can into the top of one of the tubes

Drop

You finish your drink at the corner. Instead of throwing it in the basket, you drop it into the mouth of a tube.

02
Top view of the four tube mouths on the litter basket

Stack

The can falls the length of the tube and lands on the two floor bars. The next one stacks on top of it. Four tubes hold about twenty containers, upright, dry, and out of the trash stream.

03
A hand taking a can out of the window at the bottom of the tube

Take

Whoever comes for them reaches into a window at the bottom, takes the lowest can, and the column drops one place.

Plan view of the four tubes set to a Ø670 bin, showing the container sizes that pass through: Ø66 twelve-ounce can, Ø62 five-hundred millilitre PET, Ø73 twenty-ounce PET and Ø76 twenty-four-ounce can
The same three motions, drawn. In plan, the four tubes sit on the basket's own radius, about 400 mm across. The circles show what the throat has to pass: a 12 oz can, a 500 mL bottle, a 20 oz bottle and a 24 oz can.

04 Field test

We built it out of cardboard and tested it on a real basket.

Edin Cheng and a passer-by giving a thumbs up beside the installed rack on a Manhattan corner

05 Why now

New York is about to make every can and bottle worth more. The hardware should be ready when it does.

The Bigger Better Bottle Bill would expand New York's deposit system. It would cover far more of what people actually drink and raise what each container returns. If it passes, the number of containers worth collecting goes up sharply. However, every one of them still has to come out of a trash basket by hand.

Drop Empties is not waiting for that. The Deposit Rack works under the system we have now, and it works better under the one we are asking for.

06 What's next

What a small grant actually buys.

01

Ten real units

Ten Deposit Racks built in clear anodised 6061 aluminium, each with the hemmed take-out window, the sight slot and the powder-coated rail.

02

One host block

Place them on a single block with a willing partner, like a BID, a bodega or a community board. All ten sit in one walkable stretch. This means the people who collect can build a route around them.

07 Who's building it

Edin Cheng standing beside the installed Deposit Rack in Flatiron

Edin Cheng

I am a high school student in New York who became interested in canners after seeing how much work goes into something most people walk past. I started noticing canners on my own block, digging through trash and sorting cans in the heat.

As an Asian American, I have also seen people from my own community doing this work, often without much recognition. The more I noticed them, the more I wanted to understand their lives and the system around them. My goal for building the Deposit Rack is to make canning a little safer, easier, and more respected.