Bostonians have just come down from the high of community spirit driven by the marathon. We’ll soon get another opportunity for that same high when we get together to clean up the city. It’s the Scrub the Hub, aka Boston Shines, days. For downtown Bostonians, those days are May 9 and 10. Remarkably, lots of people show up for this heavy-duty work detail, and they enjoy it. The city supplies brooms and other cleaning paraphernalia. It’s nice to get out and be with your neighbors, some of whom you’ve not seen since you were all out shoveling after the last snowstorm. It’s also nice to have clean sidewalks, schoolyards and medians after a winter when trash has been laminated in the ice.         There’s only one problem with this scenario. The cleaning doesn’t last. There are not enough trash bins along streets heavily used by pedestrians, especially in the center of historic neighborhoods frequented by thousands of tourists. The bins that do exist are often overflowing. Not enough shopkeepers and homeowners sweep or pick up in front of their property. Too many dog owners leave their bags in a tree pit. Finally, in the North End and on Beacon Hill, household trash can sit legally on the street for up to 19 hours three days a week if the trash haulers don’t come until noon—which happens more than the city likes to admit. That’s almost a third of an entire week, ample opportunity for the rats or the trash pickers to get into the bags and strew around the contents. There is hope on at least one front—trash pickup. Because of an outcry from downtown neighborhoods, led by 1,000 signatures from North Enders and a community meeting convened by City Councilor Sal LaMattina, city officials have asked prospective trash haulers to bid on several scenarios, including more recycling pickups and a shorter window, probably beginning at 6 a.m., for legally setting out trash on pickup days. This affects mostly the North End and Beacon Hill, since neighborhoods with large apartment buildings like the West End or Downtown have building-by-building solutions, the city believes Charlestown residents have more space, although along some streets that idea is a stretch, and the Back Bay has alleys, which make storing trash easier. Bids have been received but no word has come out on a decision. Here is the statement from the city from spokeswoman Gabrielle Farrell: “One of the options for bidding involves multiple recycling days in those districts, and bids were opened March 27th and 28th. Multiple collection districts have been assessed and discussions are ongoing about the process ahead.” I think that means city officials are still scratching their heads over what to do now. Councilor Josh Zakim’s office clarified things a bit. “The new contract is out to bid,” said Kyndal Henicke, Zakim’s deputy chief of staff. “They are soliciting bids for the two plus two, [She means two trash pickup days and two recycle pickup days.] and also a narrower pick-up window. Ideally, our office would like two plus two.” She said the city also solicited bids for keeping things the way they are now—three trash pickup days and one recycling pickup each week in those two neighborhoods. City officials said they thought changing the schedule would increase costs, which some North End residents questioned. City officials would not say when a decision will be made, and neither Zakim’s nor LaMattina’s office were privy to the city’s schedule for decision making. But if we don’t change our schedules, we won’t get cleaner streets, nor will we achieve our goal in recycling, which everyone says they want. We’ll just continue feeding the landfills. To get perspective on this, I asked friends who live in the Marina district in San Francisco, a city that is remarkably clean and has achieved all kinds of success in reducing trash. We joke that we lead parallel lives on each coast. Like us, they generate only a small bag of trash each week. The rest is recycle. But the parallel ends there. Despite the close quarters in the Marina, they have a garage, as do their neighbors. They have three bins— one each for trash, recyclables and kitchen and yard waste for compost. All of this gets picked up once a week. For this service, they paid $335 in 2012 on top of their tax bill. I wonder if Bostonians are ready for that. Meanwhile, although it isn’t part of the current contract bid, Boston is looking into adding kitchen and yard waste pickup to city services, where it would apparently go into a big city compost pile, said Kyndal Henicke. JP residents have been clamoring for such a service. She said Beacon Hill might be the site of a pilot program for downtown. Stay tuned.