High-tech, solar garbage compactors are on some Brooklyn streets, helping to keep the sidewalks a bit cleaner by compacting trash and bottles that would have overflowed.

The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership plans to install more than 100 solar compactors, half for garbage and half to recycle bottles and cans. The sun powers solar panels on top of the receptacles, which compact the contents inside.

Karen Williams praises the compactors, saying they're needed because they will help cut down on the unsightly garbage that she sometimes sees on the streets.

"This is all based in the cloud. It's an Internet-based system," says Andrew Kalish, of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. "It sends to a little dashboard that our guys monitor. They can monitor from a cellphone, monitor from a tablet, monitor from any computer, and it says, 'this trash can is full.'"

The Downtown Brooklyn Partnership installed two blue compactors during the winter as part of a pilot program to ensure that people would use them and that the compactors could be serviced effectively.

The compactors are in Park Slope and Bay Ridge and can hold five times the amount of a normal trash can.