I previously wrote about the banana peel being the universal sign for trash. But there I noted that the trash can image did not only contain an icon for the banana peel, but a hand picking it up. So the two trash can signs above, spotted in the rural city of Mäntyharju, Finland caught my attention as they also display an action to do with the trash can.
The first one shows a person dropping something that looks like crumpled papers into a trashcan, while the second one is showing someone just putting something down the hatch. (The sign was a bit broken, there didn't seem to be anything depicted in the hand based on my onlooker-attracting closer look.)
So I am increasingly getting the feeling that these trash can signs serve the dual purpose of indexing the physical location of a trash can and reminding the viewer what to do by displaying exemplar behaviour