Hmm… I have teenage kids. This sounds like a PERFECT chore for them! Especially the boy; with his hygiene habits he might not even notice the filth.
Brilliant, sir!
Ooh, I’ve had this problem. Turned out that the representatives of Waste Management neglected to pull a lever in the cab, and my bin got dropped into the sea of waste. You’d think they’d notice that a bin didn’t make its way back to the ground, but no.
I called WM and pitched a bitch. They said that they’d deliver a new one the following Monday but that I could just put out plastic trashbags and they’d pick them up. I wanted a discount for the inconvenience. IIRC, it went along the lines of the fact that the trashbags couldn’t provide the same gallons of storage as a bin. Ended up with $3.23. I won.
I didn’t even get a new bin, in fact, it looked suspiciously like the old bin that had a paint stain. Gosh I hope they cleaned it before returning it. Kinda doubt it though.
My current trash problem [hijack] is the icky woman who trawls the neighborhood searching through the Curb-Cycle bins. Nasty. I’ve told her that I feel violated by her rummaging through my waste. She replied that “the cops won’t do nothin’”. Lovely. I haven’t observed her pilfering (which is illegal, as printed on the bins) in MY bins lately, just everyone else on the street. I do know that the bins look decidedly different when I view them in the morning prior to pickup. We have to put the bins out the prior evening, due to a neighbor who has requested quiet in the early hours of the morning.
I want to (but never would) put a noxious substance in my bins to deter her.[/hijack]
Damn aliens. First anal probes, now our garbage cans. Where will it stop?
When they start probing our anuses with garbage cans.
I know you already have your beloved can back, just chiming in with a thought. Some PDs are set up to take minor police reports online. It’s much easier than either calling or going down to the station.
A few months ago someone went down our street in the middle of the night, smacking driver’s side rear view mirrors. Calling the PD info line got me a phone menu that, among other things, suggested reporting online. I’ll take online over a phone menu any day. They emailed back the report number.
I’m trying to decide if vandals suck harder than thieves.
When I moved into my house I had not one but FIVE free garbage cans at my disposal. They are all mostly useless - I just put my bag on the curb.
I’ve managed to throw away two by just writing “THIS CAN IS TRASH” on it several times in large letters using a yellow paint marker. I fill them with trash first because having a new home I seem to have a lot of trash yet.
You could also put them outside with the rest of the trash, empty and upturned with a note taped to them “THIS IS TRASH.”
Garbage collectors aren’t that dim 
At the old apartment, someone stole our old recycling bins multiple times. The most frustrating was when it was our big bins that got stolen after they discontinued them, and we had to move down to the smaller bins. (We recycle a lot at our house, and had two of the jumbo bins, one for paper and one for plastic.) Yes, they were free, but it was a pain in the patoot to go and get them replaced.
In our new borough, they use those transparent blue bags for recycling, which are neater and easier to carry.
My garbage company does not supply garbage cans. They supply humungo yard waste and recycling bins, but not garbage cans. The largest garbage can we can have is a 30, or is 32 gallon garbage can. This sucks big time. We are a family of four with two pets. Lotso garbage here, even if we are recycling. Also, my garbage company does not recycle glass. We have to throw those in the trash or keep them to the side in the garage and haul them to a glass recycling center. What a pain.
At any rate, this was about stolen garbage cans. Sorry about that. Mine has never been stolen, although the wind has taken it on a few trips around the neiighborhood.
When one of my garbage cans needed to go to its Great Reward, I just put it into another garbage can at an insouciant angle, and the lovely garbage truck took it away.
But since disposing of that can, I’m at least three cans to the good. I think I can figure out where two of them came from (I just switched trash companies, and they give you two – but not, apparently, two new cans, just two new to you cans). The third new can, though, is a mystery.
Much like the mystery of why my neighbors have started parking one of their cars on their front lawn. Rather than, say, their garage, driveway, or the street.
Throw them into the nearest available dumpster.