I have just discovered that those odd waste/recycling bins that are all over the oldest bits of Bergen, Norway, link to an UNDERGROUND PNEUMATIC WASTE TRANSPORT SYSTEM. The waste collects for a bit and then WHOOSH... it's off to the recycling centre. All underground. No bin lorries (garbage trucks), fewer road vehicles, less noise... amazing. @davidho says that my (considerable) excitement about this is entirely unreasonable. I disagree. https://www.envacgroup.com/how-it-works/the-envac-system/
@helenczerski The Magic Kingdom, the first theme park built in Walt Disney World, also has a pneumatic trash conveyor as part of a corridor system built below street level. It was an ambitious project that sadly none of the later parks would duplicate.
@helenczerski@davidho we have it in a few places in the Netherlands too (like Almere), I don't know about how hard it is to maintain but considering these exist in quite a few places already I'd say they're viable enough to implement in more places
@helenczerski@davidho I'd hate to be the person who has to unclog the pipes after a bag burst or a tour bus came through, but this is absolutely awesome.
The video where a smart card is used to open the disposal chute is sus, though,
@helenczerski@davidho
This tube will get stuck. I’m sorry for your enthousiasm but it doesn’t work.
The real solution is working on products that are not so elaborately packed in plastic, boxes, with stickers on it, and so on … products don’t need all to be an advertising item.
@birdutterance@helenczerski@davidho It’s been working there for 17 years…. Obviously reducing garbage is key, but this takes a lot of vehicles off the street as well as efficiently delivering separated waste (it tracks packets so it knows where to route them).
@helenczerski@davidho
In the US and Australia, all the recycling bins are picked up by separate recycling trucks which take the stuff directly to a recycling warehouse. From there the stuff is shipped directly to a landfill, incinerator, or overseas.
@helenczerski@davidho Love this concept! One weird thing. People are supposed to separate the waste, but the pipes appear to all lead to the same big pipe. But then again, people aren't very good at separating waste.
Oh. The items are placed in bags before they are sent down. I wonder if North Americans would use them properly?
@helenczerski@davidho Curious that all of the different purpose bins connect to the same tubes. Is it a time based system for recycling emptying at one hour and trash at another? A quick glance at the web page didn't help.
@elithebearded@davidho They say it's a smart system - they're tracking every package of waste as it moves through, so the machines can separate them out at the recycling plant. If you dig through the webpages, it's in there.
@thiagocsf@davidho If you keep digging through all the information (I did), they say that it's such a smart system that it can sort out all the different packages when they arrive at the recycling plant. They know exactly what's going in, where it is, and when it arrives. It accumulated underneath each bin until there's enough to go in one package, and they can track those packages.
@ill_logic@Pionir@thiagocsf@helenczerski@davidho It would take a great deal more air pressure. Also, people are not uniformly shaped, so a capsule is a must. While such pneumatic transport systems really did exist in the 19th century, these were never fully realised beyond exhibitions for world’s fairs.
Still, when I was a kid, I really wanted to ride around in those pneumatic tubes.
@helenczerski@davidho Every morning at coffee we must stop talking for a minute while the diesel garbage truck groans up the hill, spewing smoke and leaving a trail of rotten organic molecules. (Otherwise a nice cafe though.)
@robpike@helenczerski@davidho Reminds me of the diesel truck that used to belch out fumes while delivering bottled water ("fresh from the spring") to my workplace. We switched to using tap water.
Add comment