The City of Lynn is taking a creative route to help clean up downtown by partnering with Creative Outdoor Advertising to add more than 4,300 gallons of capacity for waste disposal in the downtown and other commercial districts, including Market Square and Boston Street.

“Keeping the City clean is a priority for residents and all of us in government,” said Mayor Jared Nicholson. “We are fortunate to have partners supporting those efforts.”

Creative Outdoor is a Florida-based company that provides streetscaping programs to more than 150 municipalities and transit authorities in North America.

In Lynn, they have installed 48 units that contain three 30-gallon trash barrels.

The company collects the trash, and this service comes at no cost to the city.

Creative Outdoor sells advertising on the units and keeps most of the revenue, while the city also gets a small percentage.

According to Lauren Drago, associate planning director, the city has access to an online portal through which it can submit requests for containers to be emptied or repaired. Creative Outdoor can electronically track when a unit was last serviced.

Artists from RAW Art Works and the mayor’s office helped design the signs placed in some units that do not yet contain ads.

“It matches the branding of our Downtown Cultural District,” Drago said. “We wanted to make sure the placeholders look really good.”

Drago said that advertising on the containers also allows local businesses to enhance their brand awareness.

Last summer, the city used American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to purchase 75 Bigbelly barrels that were placed in more than two dozen parks across the city. Those barrels contain a solar compactor, allowing for maximum capacity.