Requiem for a Trash Can

You’d think road-side trash cans would be an unlikely thing to be nostalgic about. Unless you’re from Manitoba, and the trash can is a four-foot white fibreglass globe with a round opening. That was Orbit, a highway litter program that used space-age symbolism to encourage drivers to, as the signs put it, “put your trash into Orbit.” I remember the globular trash cans well from childhood road trips in the 1970s. But in the end they were abused—set on fire, shot or filled with all kinds of garbage—and increasingly expensive to replace, so the program wound down in the 1990s. CBC Manitoba has the story of Orbit, and what may be the last surviving Orbit receptacle—which was also featured in James Rewucki’s 2013 short film, Where Have All the Orbits Gone?