I'm seeing more and more of these around London and the SE of the UK. Bin...

Julian Bond - 2012-12-14 17:13:33+0000 - Updated: 2012-12-14 17:15:47+0000

I'm seeing more and more of these around London and the SE of the UK. Bins made of clear plastic bin liner so you can see what's in the rubbish. I have this horrible feeling that this is an anti-terrorist, anti-riot thing allied to public safety announcements about reporting unattended baggage. It makes me want to fantasise about dropping a smoke grenade into them, except that of course the heat would mean it would just burn straight through the bin liner.

There's a delightfully "New Aesthetic" comment at the bottom of the tumblr post with reference to "the bin icon doesn’t resemble the actual bin" "Failed skeuomorphism. We need... [a,sic] catchy word for that."

Twitter / Kisa:”This bin has a bin icon on it to...

William Buist - 2012-12-14 17:28:23+0000

Iconoplasty?

Julian Bond - 2012-12-14 17:35:22+0000

The classic one is the floppy disk to mean save file. The bin is in a similar area since even dustbins don't look like dustbins any more.

Julian Bond - 2012-12-14 17:39:30+0000 - Updated: 2012-12-14 17:42:59+0000

All that is just a distraction though. I'm much more interested in public rubbish bins made out of clear plastic liners and what that's all about. Why are we putting our rubbish on display?

And of course, its worse than that. Why does a blog about the "New Aesthetic" focus on the design failure of the icon rather than ask that question? It's as if they're arguing about the CCTV warning rather than smashing the camera.

William Buist - 2012-12-14 17:44:58+0000

I think as you sy it's so that you can see what's in there in public spaces. The IRA bombing campaigns created loads of litter as a side effect because all the street bins vanished. Solution : #Lowtech

Andy Smith - 2012-12-14 18:15:13+0000

If the icon looked like the bin does, you wouldn't know that it meant 'bin'

Jas Strong - 2012-12-14 18:51:53+0000

The anti-terrorist bins I liked back in the 80s were the extremely strong ones with a lid on top made out of metal designed to slam closed in event of an explosion. I think they were too expensive, though, and in any case once the bins had all disappeared the IRA switched to truck bombs.