Anyone that has spent a weekend night in Adams Morgan knows about the Jumbo Slice Pizza. After a night out on the town, people can walk anywhere along 18th St. NW for a massive piece of pie.
But after you’ve taken the last bite, all you have left is the jumbo pizza box. The square boxes would be jammed, pushed and shoved into the trash cans until no more would fit inside.
People would then stack them on top, which is why the trash cans in Adams Morgan sometimes looked like the District’s version of The Leaning Tower of Pisa. The pizza boxes would then fall all over, making the sidewalk cluttered and creating a new hangout for rats.
The Adams Morgan Partnership BID said they have a solution.
“We bought two of the pizza box trash cans to replace the two BIG BELLY trash cans that had outlived their life span,” Executive Director of Adams Morgan Partnership BID Kristen Barden told WTOP.
The two trash cans are located at 18th and Belmont and close to the mid-block crosswalk in the 2400 block of 18th Street NW.
“Pizza boxes don’t fit well in the Victor Stanley cans that Department of Public Works provides on the street and the BIG BELLY containers didn’t work very well for that either, so while not rat proof, this is a better solution to organize the pizza boxes,” Barden said. “Our Clean Team empties all the trash and recycling cans every day so this will help to organize the pizza boxes better for collection.”
Someone very happy about the new trash cans lives above The Jumbo Pizza Mart.
“They look good. They are good for the environment,” Muhammad said.
He told WTOP he sees a lot of pizza boxes on the sidewalk on the weekend.
“You cannot actually count them. Like, almost 1,000,” Muhammad said.
It’s not only people living in the neighborhood that are pleased with the new trash cans, it’s also people working in local businesses.
“It’s amazing. I think it’s a great idea,” Andy’s Pizza manager Jeronimo Betancur said. “Our orders are mostly for delivery, we don’t do much of a mess with the boxes, but there are other stores that do give pizza boxes to go, and usually on a Friday or Saturday, the place used to be full of pizza boxes all over.”
Betancur told WTOP that he believes the new trash cans are going to solve a lot of the problems.
