Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

For our science project, we want to engineer a trashcan for high rain/flood areas to limit the amount of trash that gets into the ocean.
How would you design a trashcan for high rain/flood areas that would not be able to tip over or flood? Would a drainage function work? What about residential trashcans that need to be moveable?
Thank you!

That's a project that I have never seen before, but I can appreciate the usefulness of it.
If you are in a flood-prone area then I would think that you would have already planned for this problem by either moving the trashcans up onto a higher floor or else keeping them on an elevated stand. Floods seldom come without warning and you would have time to move the cans to a safe location.

I would think that keeping rain out of a can would be simply a matter of having a tight lid in place at all times. Wind could still blow the can over so a metal trolley or support that would hold the can upright in a wind could solve the problem. Here again, if you know that a hurricane or tornado is coming you should bring the cans inside.

Commercial waste containers like dumpsters are a whole other problem because of their size and leakiness. Their lids are not tight enough to keep out rain and many have holes in the bottom for drainage. Raising the waste containers up several feet on a platform could be effective and lids could be made to cover the container tightly so that rain could not enter.

Are you planning an experiment to test this?

Sybee