Trash talk

BERLIN (AP) - Fed up with garbage-strewn streets? Berlin thinks it has found a solution - trash cans that say thank you.

Starting next spring, the German capital's trash service will build electronics into a handful of the city's 20,000 street-side wastebaskets that will allow them to speak or sing to the public, a spokesman said Thursday.

"We want to encourage people in a nice, funny way to throw their trash in the baskets and not on the street," said the official, Bernd Mueller. The talking trash cans - powered by solar cells - are meant to show that Berlin is "a modern city with high-tech services, and that it is also very cosmopolitan," he added.
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