Every media outlet around seems to be covering the UBU Binner cart at the moment. It looks like a pretty reasonable design, but since I’m a jerk and a guy who knows something about bike trailers, allow me to throw some cold water on things. Not too much, I promise.

Short version: it’s pretty expensive.

Long version: it’s not that bad. This is a commercial trailer that does most of what the UBU cart does, for about 3/4 the price, and that includes some actual profit for the maker and vendor, which I doubt the UBU’s $300 price tag does. A more evil comparison is this nice-looking project which can be had for $30 in parts and a lot of labour.

There’s nothing wrong with non-profit! I am a big fan of MEC, no matter what Taiga thinks of them. But I suspect this project would be better configured as a sweat-equity deal: we help you build your cart.

As it is presently formed, the plan is to hope that ads on the sides of the carts will be worth $20/month, which will be used to maintain the carts. The ownership/renting/maintenance/advertising schemes I have seen proposed are complicated and will require a substantial administrative overhead: someone will have to sell ads, pay binners their monthly maintenance bonuses, fix broken carts, receive payments, and for all I know, repo delinquent carts. Is this a project to improve the lot of binners, or a job-creation scheme for non-profit society workers?

I have no idea if the cart itself is sturdy, reliable, well-built, or whatever. I do know its creators have proverbially reinvented the wheel, right down to collapsibility. I wonder if they have actually gained anything by doing so.

But I think binning itself is a noble occupation. To the eternal shame of my lovely (and patient) bride, I have been known to repurpose garbage myself, when the garbage in question is a discarded bicycle. If this cart makes binners happier, stops them from stealing grocery carts, and reduces the noise in back alleys, I can get behind that.