Jerusalem: Haredi riots prompt switch to metal trash cans

Something I have always wondered about is why the Jerusalem municipality keeps putting out new plastic garbage bins (after the old ones have been burned up by Haredi rioters), since the new ones can just as easily be torched the next time people decide it's cool to have a riot. It appears that they've now decided to replace them with metal trash cans.

An article from February 26, 2009 on Ynet, by Ronen Medzini reports on the change:

The Jerusalem Municipality has replaced dozens of plastic garbage bins with noncombustible metal ones, this after recurring ultra-Orthodox riots in protest of the annual Gay Pride Parade have cost the city more than a million shekels over the past five years.

During the past few weeks the new garbage bins have been dispersed throughout the haredi neighborhoods of Mea Shearim, Geula, Kerem Avraham and Shmule Hanavi, where extremist Jews have held violent demonstrations against the municipality and the local police's decisions, including the authorization of the gay parade.

An additional 200 metal bins are expected to be scattered throughout the city over the next few weeks.

City Council Member Sa'ar Netanel (Meretz) found that the riots of 2008, which erupted in protest of the arrest of three "modesty patrol" members, cost the city NIS 150,000 ($36,000).

According to Netanel, the June 2007 protests against the gay parade, during which some 300 trash cans were damaged, cost the city NIS 200,000 ($48,000), and the damages caused during haredi protesters in 2005 were estimated at NIS 100,000 ($24,000).