No can do

The question dances along the streets, like a paper cup dragged by the wind. From the tony brick sidewalks to the tramped-upon tourista vistas, are there enough city cans guarding against garbage on the sidewalks of our cosmopolitan metropolis?

From Chinatown: "I don't think so," says Marie Moy , cochairwoman of the Boston Chinatown Resident Association . "There's trash all over the place, that's how I know."

And Beacon Hill: "There's nowhere for people to put their trash," says Peter Begley , a member of the local civic association's Clean Beacon Hill Committee, about a Cambridge Street corridor that is short on cans. "They'll only hold onto an empty cup for so long before they drop it on the ground."

And the South End, too: "It's quite clear to anybody who walks the streets of the South End, if you have a cup of coffee, or you're picking up dog stuff, you don't hit trash barrels at a rate you should in such a fantastic neighborhood," says Kyle Hancock , a member of the Ellis South End Neighborhood Association.

The racket from residents over nuts-and-bolts issues like the amount of litter containers can seem like just so much white noise in a place like Boston, the Athens of America, the Hub of the Universe, the Mecca of Medical Care.

Yet down at street level, few things get proper Bostonians more riled up and ready to tell the city fathers to "stuff it!" than being in a neighborhood where they don't see sufficient municipal rubbish hampers.

Like the North End. "It's a joke," says Mark Petrigno , owner of The Connah Store, at Hanover and Parmenter streets. "I look out my store and I don't see one."

What he and others in the neighborhood say they do see is a stream of cigarette butts, scratch tickets, and styrofoam plates trailing from tourist targets to neighborhood nooks.

In the politics of placement, many in Boston's neighborhoods have been stumping for more litter bins.

But as the spot where past, present , and future converge on streets swollen with people and patisseries, the North End represents ground zero in the battle over city barrels and baskets.

North Enders say the 26 municipal receptacles recorded by the city there are not enough for 12,000 residents to deposit their own occasional bite-sized detritus, let alone for the millions who descend on the neighborhood during the year for Italian food and the historic Freedom Trail.

And already feeling there's a scarcity of public hoppers, some North Enders wonder how the city will be able to cover the new urban spaces unfolding there alongside the acres of greenway spawned by the Big Dig.

"If there's a vision to enliven the streetscape and have cafes and restaurants -- all those new buzzwords -- if there's no trash cans th en you'll have as much litter there as up and down the main drag," says Fredda Hollander , cochairwoman of the North End/Waterfront Residents' Association Clean Streets Committee.

As superintendent of the Boston Public Works Department's Highway Division, Joseph Canavan absorbs a lot of the trash talk from residents.

He understands their desire to see more receptacles, and recently added a barrel-full to the South End after resident complaints that they were spending their free time scooping up collateral trash.

But overall, he believes there are plenty in place for those looking to just toss their wrappers or the like: one for every 459 residents in the city.

He worries that more cans will simply attract more homegrown slop. Most of the municipal litter barrels around town, he says, have become magnets for household trash -- everything from diapers to chicken bones. Despite risking a $1,000 fine , that junk comes from locals crammed into tight condo spaces without their own private trash cans, those too lazy to seek out their back-alley barrels, or drive-by dumpers from out of town.

Though there are no precise numbers available, the city says its 15 code enforcement officers, who patrol in uniform, are a deterrent against littering and illicit dumpers, whom they also track through evidence left in the trash.

Canavan says that city workers are steadily trying to keep up with household offloading, leaving some containers constantly clogged even after being emptied one to five times a day, depending on the locale.

"It's not a cigarette or coffee cup," Canavan says of much of the garbage his crews find in municipal holders. "It's treating it like a private dumpster."

As part of the tug of war over trash cans, Canavan says that even as some residents or businesses may clamor for more, others don't want them lest they overflow with household swill.

Take Hanover Street. The first block heading away from downtown is one of the busiest in the city. Yet there's not a single public receptacle on the south side of the street.

"It's amazing," says Petrigno. "Who doesn't come to the North End and snack on pastries?"

Yet Canavan says that up until three months ago, there were four pole baskets to catch litter on that block. He suspects they were taken down by someone fed up with them being overrun with family trash. And that's not the first time they went up and down, he says.

Canavan says he'll have them replaced, again.

Petrigno says he had a municipal bin outside his store, but several years ago asked the city to take it away. He says there weren't enough elsewhere in the area -- he'd like to see at least a couple on every block -- so his became an overflowing parfait of gelato dishes, pizza crusts, and espresso cups, with plastic bags of household trash mixed in.

"It was a disaster," Petrigno says.

He has no interest, he says, in participating in the city's adopt-a-barrel program -- they provide the barrel for outside his store, he's responsible for emptying it.

"We pay enough taxes," Petrigno says of having to do his own barrel unburdening.

He says, however, that he'd love to see in the neighborhood some of those new solar-powered compacting trash cans the city unveiled this summer, 50 of them placed around downtown and the Back Bay and Mattapan Square. Petrigno figures those big-belly barrels are big enough to handle any kind of garbage that comes their way.

"What are we, idiots?" says Petrigno, who also lives in the North End. "We don't deserve them?"

Canavan says those compactors may hold more street trash than the typical barrels, by about 40 gallons to 18, but they also cost a ton -- $4,500 versus $125 for a common can.

"Cost-prohibitive," at the moment, Canavan says about running out and ordering more.

That's not the only demand he has on a $15 million budget he says is earmarked for street maintenance. Canavan says even if he wanted to put a can on every corner, who would empty them?

On any given day, he says, there are 35 to 40 workers emptying barrels along the 850 miles of city roads. But those same workers are also responsible for street cleaning, emergency construction, pothole patching, clearing ice and snow, he says. If new avenues open up and trash-can demand increases, Canavan says he will have to find a way to absorb any additional garbage runs into his people's workload, since he doesn't have the money for new hires.

"We have to prioritize every day," Canavan says.

For now, one could be walking from the snazzy new brick plaza on Cross Street that connects the old North End to the budding greenway, heading toward Government Center while holding a cannoli doily, and not find a public barrel in which to toss it for 230 feet .

That's more than enough distance to turn a busy Bostonian with a law-abiding bent into a litterbug risking a $25 fine , specialists say.

"If you're already pressed for time, to spend five minutes searching around for a trash can is five minutes less you have on your lunch hour," says Frank McAndrew , professor of psychology at Knox College in Illinois and author of the book "Environmental Psychology."

McAndrew believes a city can't have too many rubbish receptacles to go around.

"It's remarkable how little effort people are willing to go to to dispose of things," he says.

Hollander sees the urge to discard all around her as she traverses the North End: ice cream dishes resting on window ledges; pastry cartons tippy-toe on traffic control boxes; coffee cups jammed into newspaper boxes; soda cans stuffed into fencing.

To her, the impulse people have to find a lodging place for litter, rather than toss it into the gutter, shows a dearth of trash containers, not conscience.

"They don't want to litter," she says of visitors to her neighborhood.

"How many dead soda cans can you carry around?"

Ric Kahn can be contacted at rkahn@globe.com.