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Email this StoryNov 20, 10:02 AM (ET)
By MATT DUEHOLM
BERLIN (AP) - Fed up with garbage-strewn streets? Berlin thinks it has found a solution - trash cans that say thank you.
Starting next spring, the German capital's trash service will build electronics into a handful of the city's 20,000 street-side wastebaskets that will allow them to speak or sing to the public, a spokesman said Thursday.
"We want to encourage people in a nice, funny way to throw their trash in the baskets and not on the street," said the official, Bernd Mueller. The talking trash cans - powered by solar cells - are meant to show that Berlin is "a modern city with high-tech services, and that it is also very cosmopolitan," he added.
Making Berlin's visitors feel at home, some of the baskets will be programmed to say "Thank you" or "Merci" instead of "Danke," Mueller said. The talking wastebaskets will be installed at heavily visited sites such as the Reichstag building and the central Friedrichstrasse train station.
Still, the garbage cans will be silent after dark.
"Some people might feel uncomfortable if these things said something to them at night," Mueller said.
Instead, lights around the opening of the basket will glow green.
Mueller declined to say how much the project would cost or exactly how many baskets will be introduced next spring, but he said Berlin hopes to market the product in other German cities.
The capital decided to go ahead with the project after drawing a favorable
response from passers-by when it tested a prototype last summer.
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