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Yea or Nay? A Garbage Can That Freezes Your Trash
Petal puts the freeze on bad smells
By Rain Noe - September 23, 2020
This is one of those objects where I can recognize the individual desire for it, but at the same time it speaks of a systemic problem in our society that we're not addressing. So I have mixed feelings.
The object in question is Petal, a garbage can designed to freeze your trash. The product, designed by New York designer Scott Henderson, claims that for less than $1/month in electricity costs, the can will "quickly and cost-effectively freeze potentially hazardous and noxious waste so it doesn't spread germs and stink up your home."
- Eliminating the "ick-factor": Dispose of dirty diapers, food scraps, adult incontinence briefs, feminine hygiene products, pet waste, and anything else that stinks with the knowledge that your home environment will remain fresh and clean.
- Reducing the Nuisances of Composting: Saving food scraps for compost should be a universal practice. Period. Petal easily transitions you to saving food scraps by eliminating the nuisances of fruit flies, rodents, pet-tampering, 'garbage juice', and foul-odors. If they can't smell it, they can't find it. For curious toddlers, the child lock does the trick.
- Stopping the Spread of Disease and Microbial Threats: Freezing harmful bacteria and viruses renders them inert without breeding bacterial resistance (super germs). Petal also enables you to quarantine discarded masks, gloves, and medical waste with ease and peace of mind.
My first issue with these proposed use cases is with the food scraps and composting. If this device was solely designed to freeze food scraps for a later composting cycle, sure, I see the wisdom. But doesn't mixing it in with the other garbage mentioned above obviate the possibility of composting?
The second issue I have is the "stopping the spread of disease and microbial threats" part. How many of us, in a domestic situation, are disposing of medical waste? And how many people do you know that have fallen ill from merely handling household garbage? I get that we live in COVID times, and I wear a mask and wash my hands like I'm supposed to; but this part of the product pitch strikes me as fear-mongering.
My third issue: I understand that soiled diapers, used tampons and many types of garbage stink. But I feel like we've solved these problems by placing lids on garbage cans. Yes, when you open the lid, you sometimes catch a nasty whiff; does that warrant creating yet another object that we must plug into the wall, and one that contains refrigerant (okay, "environmentally sustainable refrigerant") to boot? I'd argue that roughly once a day, all of us--scientists, artists, finicky designers--go to the bathroom and produce what is widely considered the most unpleasant smell in the world. But we've recognized that this is what our body produces and we've learned to deal with it.
The overarching systemic problem I'm referring to is that our society produces a lot of garbage, and some of it stinks, and I'm not sure we should be inuring ourselves to that. At least with the food, we should be addressing that by either generating less food scraps or developing widespread and universally-available composting systems.
However, in favor of this object: I get that some things, we don't need to smell. I recently listened to a radio show where the host recounted spending her teen years caring for her mother, who was paralyzed. She said the house constantly smelled of piss; her mother's diapers piled up in bins until trash day, and the smell pervaded the house.
Similarly, I'm childless and don't have to deal with diapers, and even when I lived in an area where I had to bag my dogs' defecations, I never had to bring it back inside my house. For those that live in these situations, I see the value of Petal.
What is your take on this object?
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Rain Noe
I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.
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Yea or Nay? A Garbage Can That Freezes Your Trash
Chicken skins and fat that I carve off of parts end up in a bag in my freezer till garbage day. They can clog the food grinder and coat pipes with grease which smells. A seperate trash can is probably over-kill.
At our Catskills spot, we freeze all of the non-compostable food trash in order not to attract bears. A product like this would actually be awesome alternative to having the freezer jammed full of gross stuff.
It's so heartening to see people have come across Petal and are willing to share their thoughts on something I co-invented. We teamed up up Scott Henderson, who led the industrial design, which is certainly why Petal looks so sleek. As a co-inventor, I wanted to share a little more background regarding its creation, which may not otherwise be very clear above.
Where I'm from, Toronto and its adjacent municipalities, we have what some may consider ambitious organic waste collection programs, along with recycling and landfill waste collection. The programs are mandatory by means of infrequent regular waste collection and limitations on regular waste bin sizes. It's a very good system, and the Greater Toronto Area is able to divert over 50 percent of its residential waste from landfills through its green bin and recycling programs.
The program began about 15 years ago and meant that we found ourselves suddenly having to sort our waste or pay for higher garbage hauling costs. Overnight I became a composter and at the time I lived in a condo. To paint a picture, the city provides a 7-liter beige bucket, a tiny little thing, to keep your food scraps in. Funny enough, it's sized at seven liters because they found that at any larger size, it would get so foul with rotting food that it would need emptied at the 7-liter mark anyway. Well, boy were they right. After about two weeks of keeping this thing under my counter, I had a host of nuisances on my hands - bad smells, fruit flies, and other issues - and I couldn't take it anymore. This was one important impetus for creating Petal.
On a personal front, my lovely wife also suffers from asthma and so fragrant household cleansers and deodorizers are a no go. Petal prevents and locks away odors so no deodorizers are necessary.
As we began to explore the idea initially we wondered "Why hasn't anyone done this before?" When we started looking into previous patents for household disposal freezers, low and behold, we found multiple concepts dating all the way back to 1962. The idea itself was not new. Many people had had the same "ah ha" moment. But as it turns out, ideas are some times just that.
It's worth noting that Petal's walls have twice the insulative effect of a typical household freezer. The less than $1/month electricity cost is based on the Eco Mode (10 deg F) and is derived from energy consumption tests based on requirements of the Department of Energy. These tests factor in lid openings by testing the unit at 90 degrees ambient temperatures. And yes, costs will vary depending on factors such as the electricity cost in your jurisdiction. Why electricity is so expensive with all the technology we have? That is another matter.
Also of note, Petal uses R600a refrigerant, known as isobutane. It has a 450x lower Global Warming Potential as compared R134a which was the common refrigerant previously for appliances and is now phased out. R600a is also significantly more efficient than R134a which is one of the reasons it was even possible to invent Petal. This was a very intentional choice. Petal is designed to the highest safety standards, so although R600a is flammable it poses little risk -- each Petal uses only 50 grams worth of refrigerant.
We are fully committed to working towards a goal of Zero Waste. That means when customers are finished using their Petal, we'll send them a pre-paid shipping label so they can return it to us. We are committed to responsibly recycling Petal for use in new models and/or ensuring that the materials are put to use elsewhere.
I appreciate Rain and Core77 for spotlighting us and am happy to share more about Petal if anyone is ever interested - primoz.cresnik@petalllc.com
Hi, there. Petal Co-founder and EVP of Social Impact here. Thanks so much for taking the time to cover our product!
I'm with Rain on this, it is a waste of resources and energy. Put the compost outside so it can actually compost. Freezing it is literally the opposite of composting. And if your house smells like a diaper, again, take the diaper outside. Are we so slothful taking something that stinks outside is too much? I'd also like to know the stats on getting an infection from home garbage. My guess, pretty damn low.
I think a small toaster sized compost bin size would be handy. We keep our compost in a small paper bag in the freezer until it's full and bring it to the bin. I think this is a pretty common problem for people who compost or have municipal composting pickup. How do you deal with the daily scraps before you bring them outside? The other option is putting a paper bag lined with a biodegradable film in a small bin on your counter or next to your trash bin, but that always ends up soaking through and smells awful.
I'm calling some BS on the "less than $1/mo". Currently the most efficient energy star rated compact chest freezer uses 137 kWhs/yr in testing, which would be somewhere between $1.50 and $3/mo depending on your local energy prices, and that is assuming two important things - that the frozen objects stay frozen for long periods of time (you aren't emptying everything out of the freezer every few days) and that you aren't opening the lid very often. Neither of these would be true for a trash can, so the consumption will need to go up.