I’d treat it as a small pilot, not a product demo. Before buying a hundred bins, get two or three shortlisted models and put a few units of each into real urban conditions for four to six weeks. Choose test spots that reflect your worst cases: a busy transit stop, a windy corner, a rainy/shaded area, and a site where vandalism or dumping is common.
During the pilot, check the things a catalog photo won’t tell you. Does the opening work for people walking past with coffee cups, bags, and takeout containers? Is the lid easy to use but still hard for rain, pests, and scavengers to get into? Does the liner or bag system stay secure, and can sanitation workers empty it quickly without wrestling with it? Watch for odor, leaks, graffiti, scratches, denting, rust, and loose hinges or locks. Also confirm that the bin fits your collection truck, sidewalk width, and snow-clearing or street-cleaning equipment.
Set simple pass/fail criteria before the trial: fill rate, overflow frequency, litter around the bin, cleaning time, maintenance calls, and user complaints. Ask sanitation staff and nearby businesses for feedback, because they’ll notice practical problems fast. At the end, compare not just purchase price but total cost: liners, cleaning, repairs, replacement parts, delivery, and warranty support. If one model survives the pilot with low maintenance and good user behavior, then order the hundred. If not, test another sample—it’s much cheaper than fixing a bad bulk purchase across the whole city.