Sunset Soda Can

An empty, dented Coca-Cola soda can experienced the sunset next to me at the top of Bernal Heights yesterday. After a run up to the top from my 25th Street home, I hovered over the south-side of San Francisco as the beams of sunlight wrapped around the westerly Glen Park hills and reflected off of window panes in the valley, metallic airplane frames emerging from the hills that conceal SFO, and the atmosphere that fills the horizon, before making their way onto me. I had a relentless grin on my face, I just love the mountaintop perspective of life as a giant ant colony playing itself out on a cosmic stage—it’s the most refreshing reminder of how frail we are in flesh, and how infallible we are in nature. Every so often I’d look over to the soda can to make sure it was still there, and in so doing I uncomfortably interpreted this light via the influence of its red, aluminum outfit.

For a while it was just me and my new soda can friend, about 30 feet from one another. At some point two people walked by, and we nodded and smiled in acknowledgement of the moment. As they continued on the path, they too noticed the soda can. “People should throw their trash away”, one of them mumbled while kicking the can a bit further from the ledge, a bit safer from taking a tumbling down the face of the cliff towards wherever else gravity may convince it to be. It’s as if the kicker experienced a brief moment of conviction that the can was in their way and in societies way, but the current predicament was better than if it were to fall and spread. By better situating the can, the kicker was, at least in some way, being helpful. Or maybe the kick was out of frustration that someone left a trash-worthy can on top of the hill, I don’t know. In any case, I doubt either of the two thought much of the event 20 seconds later as they continued down the path and out of sight.

I can relate to being the kicker in this situation, which is likely why I feel comfortable speculating on their mindset in that moment. Being in the position of the observer, however, I was led to a moment of curiosity. My mind explored the following sequence of thoughts:

1. Loose trash is a problem, and many people value cleanliness. What if we built a community of drones and drone-charging stations that were strategically placed and programmed to collect trash around certain parks. In the situation above, the kicker could open an app and drop a pin on a map where trash was spotted, and a machine would be dispatched to that local to collect the trash. Eventually, even the pin drop can be automated so the drone can “sense” where the trash is. Could be cool, right?
2. Let’s assume we’re able to implement that solution perfectly and it was financially viable. Now, what incentive does someone have to not walk away from their soda cans? If we furthered our custom of being cleaned after, we may very well end up with a society of people that increasingly expects their environment to accommodate them.
3. Would someone even choose to use a technology to alleviate the inconveniences of a problem they aren’t motivated to solve otherwise?
4. What about city-organized trash collection through SF Public Works? Don’t we already fund initiatives to remove trash from public spaces? What’s working for those programs? What do those programs struggle with? What is societies relationship to these initiatives? A few months ago I walked by someone on Alabama Street as they threw an empty plastic bottle of Vodka onto the sidewalk from the stoop they were sitting on. They looked me in the eyes and said “Street cleaning is tomorrow”.
5. We could expect an increasing number of trash-drones over time as this strategy became marketable. Apart from the obvious tradeoffs of drone-related problems future businesses and governments would be incentivized to solve for, a more subtle and consequential tradeoff is the nurturing of an instinct in people to design, engineer, and pay for solutions to delegate away responsibility. The result is an impression of greater ownership over our individual time and focus, often at the expense of the innate ownership we really share over our environment — which includes each other, our Earthly ambiance, and our sense of vitality. The later, in my opinion, requires an appreciation for a flexible sense of destiny. All I have is time and attention, and by suggesting I’d stay on my self-prescribed mental wavelength rather than, at a moments notice, consider a righteous detour, I am embodying a myopic understanding of self.
6. I concluded that many discomforts, responsibilities, and inefficiencies that I recognize and wish to do away with should not be solved by designing, engineering, or paying a delegate to deal with it on my behalf. It’s necessary to consider that with each brilliant, problem-solving innovation or public policy, we’re also creating new problems to solve, including psychiatric problems for which better algorithms and greater efficiencies do little. Designing and engineering a greater sense of stewardship over our day-to-day environments and interactions, alongside and interwoven with functional technology, seems like a practice worth investing in more. As we continue to create things that people will pay for, we should acknowledge that every solution inevitably plays a part in shaping a person’s perspective, their sense of appreciation, and their natural wellbeing. Similar to how architecture speaks to us about the way we should live meanwhile to it providing us the tangible values of shelter, technology speaks to us about the ways we should use our resources meanwhile to it providing us valuable new tools. Oftentimes, the best solution to a problem comes from reminding ourselves and each other what we’re capable of without spending any resource other than a smidge of our time and our attention, and these solutions can be the most rewarding for unexpected reasons.
7. If we shouldn’t necessarily spend our time creating things that the market will pay for, what are the criteria for causes worthy of innovation? I’ll let this question simmer for a few more weeks and write another story once something boils over.

I grabbed the soda can, ran down the last section of the hill to the nearest trash bin, and then ran back up to enjoy the sunset some more. The sunlight was even warmer now, and I was still grinning.