Our city provides 240 litre plastic bins with 2 wheels which are unloaded by a mechanical arm on the rubbish truck. This system generally works pretty well but on very windy days the lids fly up and rubbish blows down the street. By a simple re- design it should be possible to add wind deflectors which use the wind's power to press the lid down tighter rather than flipping up.
-- AusCan531, Sep 14 2014

Put a windmill on a pole on the lid. When the wind blows, current from the generator flows through an electromagnet, which pulls the lid down onto a steel block fixed to the body of the bin. The faster the wind blows, the harder the latch holds.

There might be a few issues, like the windmills and lids would be stolen, the handling equipment would need a complete redesign, the spinning blades would make a noise and present an injury hazard, they would be unsightly, and very expensive, but apart from that it's a perfect solution.

Or you could have a permanent magnet in the lid which would be released by a bias coil in the handling equipment, but tht would be boring.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 14 2014


Our city provides us with nothing, nada, zilch. First city I have lived in, in 30 years that didn't provide recycling bins, at the very least. From East Coast in Connecticut, to West Coast San Francisco, there were always bins. Some kind of bins. Now I've nothing. Boo-hoo. So I say yay to your wind-stopping flap, cause I can only dream of such a novel device.
-- blissmiss, Sep 14 2014


Yeah, the lid for my mum's rubbish bin blew clean off. Snapped the hinges and took wing. (It's black and smells of "rum-scented furniture polish". Ta.)
-- baconbrain, Sep 14 2014


In my little town we must haul our own garbage and recycling to a transfer station; I make the weekly trip in the family pickup truck, and I've lost count of how many times I've stopped retrieve bin lids from the ditch, despite lashing them down with twine and bungees. Here's my high- downforce bun.

You should probably throw it away, it's pretty stale.
-- Alterother, Sep 14 2014


Remember, the people who put rubbish into the bins have to be able to open them as well. Perhaps some kind of interlocking lid?
-- gisho, Sep 15 2014


my dad bolted a brick to the inside of the lid.

Wind blow wheelie bins can be a bit of a problem, if the wind blows in such a way that they rock back on their two wheels, they can then start rolling real distances. I used to work in the insurance industry. It was common enough to see a third part vehicle listed as Make: Wheelie Model: Bin
-- bs0u0155, Sep 15 2014


what [Bliss] said...and [+] We have to take our garbage to the dump unless we want to pay privately owned corporations to pick up our trash!
Hi [Alterother] - haven't seen you in a while! We have to buy $4.00 bags to put the trash in, so we don't have to load our truck with the pails. And yes, I forgot it is now a transfer station. The town sold all the landfill to a mega-corporation bringing stuff out of Boston!
-- xandram, Sep 16 2014


My favorite was people crashing their cars while not in the car. Usually people cleaning super powerful automatics, accidentally knocking them into gear.
-- bs0u0155, Sep 16 2014


+ Put the bins down upside down. That should keep the lids closed.
-- pashute, Sep 17 2014


//+ Put the bins down upside down. That should keep the lids closed.//.

I dunno [pashute]. I've had bins in Canada and in Australia but the same problem occurs.
-- AusCan531, Sep 17 2014



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