Blight, old clothes and a Danish fugitive: Inside cities' fight against donation bins

Blight, old clothes and a Danish fugitive: Inside cities' fight against donation bins


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When Ithey first started popping up around town, the colorful metal collection bins for donated shoes and clothing didn't cause much of a stir in Stanton.

And then they multiplied.

"Within a year, they were all over the city, specifically on Beach Boulevard," said City Manager James Box, whose Orange County municipality is among many in Southern California that have seen a proliferation of the receptacles in recent years.

With the bins have come blight and other problems, local officials say, not to mention a rash of complaints about overflowing drop boxes that often attract jettisoned mattresses, broken furniture and piles of garbage. Dozens of cities, including Stanton, have passed laws in the last couple of years to ban them.
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In an April decision with far-reaching ramifications, federal appellate judges in a Michigan lawsuit deemed the bins a form of constitutionally protected speech. The ruling already has spurred cities there and in California to start replacing their bans with laws that will permit the ubiquitous boxes but regulate them.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-planetaid-bins-20150814-story.html
http://www.yourwestvalley.com/surprise/article_80c8fc3c-e3c7-11e4-9566-2b8cbc67a9bd.html?mode=jqm