The trash cans in San Francisco might be worth more than your car.

To fight the city’s growing garbage problem, San Francisco officials are considering investing in top-notch, high-tech waste bins that could cost up to $20,000 each. The Department of Public Works sees it as a necessary investment; the taxpayers see it as another example of leftist insanity.

“It’s insane. Insane,” one resident told CBS News.

A committee on the board of supervisors has been working with a tech company to develop these new, custom-made trashcans that even have their own designer names: the “Salt and the Pepper,” the “Slim Silhouette,” and the “Soft Square.” The prototypes are supposed to prevent the cans from overflowing with trash and stop people from rummaging through them — two common problems that result in trash being left all over the city’s sidewalks.

However, not everyone on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is convinced.

“$20,000 a can is ridiculous,” Matt Haney, one of the board’s members, said. "Why are we still doing this? Rather than putting out a bunch of different cans that are already produced, that are much cheaper?"

The city’s Department of Public Works admitted the price tag was over-the-top, but it managed to convince the Board of Supervisors to pay for 15 prototypes that will include three different designs. If the trash cans work out, the city could reach an agreement with the manufacturer to mass-produce the bins, which might bring the price down to about $4,000 per can, DPW acting Director Alaric Degrafinried said.

San Francisco’s officials deserve a bit of slack. They’re just trying to clean up the mess that California governor and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom made when he decided to get rid of public trash cans in the city entirely back in 2007. Apparently, Newsom believed the best way to reduce garbage in the city was to get rid of the places to put it.

Clearly, Newsom was wrong. But does that mean Degrafinried is right about his $20,000 trash cans? Leave it to San Francisco to conduct some very expensive testing to answer that question.