Baltimore To Buy Trash Cans For All Households

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has announced that the city will spend about $10 million to distribute a large trash can to each household in Baltimore.

The city expects to deliver the approximately 210,000 trash cans by early next year to try and keep the streets cleaner.

Rawlings-Blake says she wants to build on the success of a pilot program launched a year ago that provided more than 9,000 trash cans to residents in Belair-Edison and the Mondawmin area. She says calls for rat extermination dropped by nearly 75 percent and fewer workers were injured lifting trash cans.

Rawlings-Blake says she expects to offset the cost through savings in the city's rat abatement and workers compensation programs.

The 64-gallon receptacles will come with two wheels, a tight-fitting lid and a tracking device.

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