
Garbage Collection, Without the Noise or the Smell - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/nyregion/garbage-collection-without-the-noise-or-the-smell.html
======
habosa
Can any NYC HN'er confirm that I am not insane:

I spent a summer in NY and I took the subway everywhere at all times. One
night I was out until ~3am and was waiting for the subway. I saw a train
coming down the tracks and it looked funny. As it went by I realized it was
actually dumpsters on wheels carrying tons of trash through the subway system.
I presumed this was how NYC moved trash across the city and I was really
impressed at the resourcefulness.

I have since been unable to find any reference to this system or anyone else
who has seen it. Am I insane? Was I drunk? Dreaming?

~~~
IIAOPSW
Ah the infamous dumpster train. The light at the end of the tunnel that is
actually false hope for hundreds of intoxicated insomniacs every night.
Congratulations, you've had one of the less publicized "true New York"
experiences. Just learn to say "Houston Street" correctly and we might not
even know you're a tourist.

The truth is that the garbage train only collects garbage at the stations. Not
the entire city. Think about it, when it comes time to remove the trash in the
station dumpsters, why run a truck over ground and lug trash up stairs when
you can just run a flat-bed down the tracks.

Other unusual subways include the rare "track inspection vehicle" and the now
discontinued "money train".

~~~
pavel_lishin
Money train?

The inspection vehicles are fucking terrifying. It's like seeing a sunrise
coming through a tunnel.

The snow-blower trains on the lines that run outside, however, are awesome. A
huge propeller-like turbine thing on the front, roaring along, sweeping the
snow off the tracks. Very cool to see.

~~~
IIAOPSW
Back in the token days, they used to collect the toll box fares the same way
the collect the station garbage. Hence "money train".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_train](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_train)

Side note, on a desperate night have you ever found yourself wondering "maybe
I can bribe the orange vest dude to let me ride the trash train because
waiting here sucks."

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _Side note, on a desperate night have you ever found yourself wondering
> "maybe I can bribe the orange vest dude to let me ride the trash train
> because waiting here sucks." _

Never.

But I've definitely considered just hopping into an empty bin, and seeing how
far it'd take me.

------
mtanski
I made the mistake of reading the comments on this NYT article. The thread is
filled with people who are against recycling at collections points.

This has been one of my pet peeves for a while now. We should be figuring out
how stop delegating to end users and figure out the recycling of most things
at the aggregation point. It's a huge economic cost to have 9 million people
do it vs. centralize it. Not to mention there's a lot of communities in NYC
that do a poor job at recycling.

For now I'm going to keep separating my recyclables till they solve it, but
doesn't stop be from being angry at the government for punting to me because
it's easy. On top of that you self righteous folks who don't want to make it
more efficient because they feel good when they sort it themselves.

~~~
jeddawson
I work in the industry (my family runs a collection operation and I focus my
effort on software for waste haulers) and I’ve seen huge variance throughout
the country in how this is handled. As mentioned earlier, some locations
operate a dirty MRF (everything is mixed and the recyclables are sorted out)
to centralize the process but the issue you run into is how low quality the
majority of the materials are once they are separated. Waste generators in
this “system” aren’t consciously putting effort into the way recyclable
material is handled so you end up of with a high percentage of residual (not
recyclable) that gets landfilled.

Here in CA, South Tahoe Refuse (STR) uses a modified process that I think
solves a lot of that problem. They give their customers durable semi-
transparent blue bags to fill with recyclable materials. This is somewhat
ceremonial but does certainly aid in the sorting efficiency. The waste
generator then places those bags in with the regular garbage and one truck
collects it all. At the STR operated MRF, they mechanically separate the blue
bags and break them open. The resulting recycling is then hand sorted. From
what I’ve seen at their MRF, the diverted material is of much higher quality
than materials I’ve seen at “regular” dirty MRFs.

I’d personally love to see waste collection return to single container/vehicle
or some less impactful method. The current regulations in CA essentially
require most locations to run 3 vehicles that collect from 3 different
containers at each residence/business since you have to hit a certain level of
diversion (keeping materials out of the landfill) that is hard to attain at a
dirty MRF. Add to that the CA health code requirements for weekly collection
and you can’t just “alternate” collection. The additional fuel consumption,
road wear, and other resource demands that result from this multiplication of
equipment & travel would be super interesting to research and document.
Figuring out a good solution that would allow you to centralize sorting and
hit high diversion percentages would result in less pollution/resource demands
and potentially lower rates for the waste generators.

Also, now everyone else is experiencing my inverse experience to every
“garbage collection” article on HN. I’d love to see more innovation, thought,
and exploration around the problem of physically collecting garbage and I love
when it’s discussed here on HN.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Is the food waste collected separately? Locally we alternate landfill and
mixed recycling, but we don't have the high temperature of CA so I guess that
helps as well as the food waste (or at least a decent proportion of it)
getting collected weekly as a separate stream. Maybe the health code just
needs updated?

(Relatedly, garbage trucks, like busses, are ideal targets for hybrid-electric
drivetrains due to high gas usage, heavy weight, low speed start-stop
journeys, and being driven where pollution (including noise) are issues)

~~~
jeddawson
They do seasonal yard waste collection separately from the primary waste
stream. When I last visited they only did a small amount of food waste
collection since their new processing plant (digester) hasn't been built. Food
waste adds in health and odor concerns so they need to build the digester
before really expanding that program.

Throughout CA and across the US it is very common to offer a separate service
for solid waste and organic waste. Certain areas/haulers have been collecting
and processing food waste for decades, but the vast majority aren't yet.

I completely agree about the need to update the health code to allow for more
efficient resource management. A minor change could dramatically impact the
annual resource consumption of the hauling industry.

Also, YES!! hybrid garbage trucks are certainly on the horizon and will have
massive positive impact. Waste Management (wm.com) was working on them at one
point around 10 years ago. Now there are several companies working on them.

Related to this, I'm working on software that increases the efficiency/density
of collection routes as customers subscribe. I feel that the vast majority of
waste haulers have allowed their routes to become inefficient and through
applying a layer of software/logic at the subscription point we can help them
be more profitable and more efficient.

------
bentcorner
The podcast _99% Invisible_ covered these tubes as well, and included a bit of
their history. Interesting listen if you want to learn a bit more.

[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-61-a-series-
of...](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-61-a-series-of-tubes/)

------
felixangell
I can't be the only one who thought this was about GC in terms of languages,
and got confused when it mentioned noise and smell...

~~~
nulltype
The new Go 1.5 GC has much shorter pause times. The smell hasn't improved much
though.

------
murbard2
I'm surprised they seem to be moving the trash directly from the chute into
the system rather than passing it through a waste shredder first. Then
Christmas trees and cardboard boxes wouldn't be an issue... (Youtube "waste
shredder" for hours of entertainement
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU3LoZZVhEw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU3LoZZVhEw))

~~~
nerfhammer
You would need one of these in every building, which seems like a lot of cost
& maintenance.

~~~
murbard2
Well, this is a huge, industrial one. You don't need that much power for home
trash / christmas trees.

------
vvpan
Roosevelt Island aside (didn't know it had the fancy system before) New York
is stuck in middle-ages with it's trash collection system. I have yet to come
to a city where the situation is so dire. Smell, noise and rats. I can't
imagine why no other system has ever been devised.

~~~
adamjernst
Garbage collection is controlled by the mob.

~~~
vvpan
That's what they say. I wonder though.

------
darkstar999
Fascinating! I've always thought about pneumatic waste systems but didn't know
they existed anywhere.

See also: NYC's Pneumatic Tube Mail Network

[http://untappedcities.com/2013/03/15/nycs-pneumatic-tube-
mai...](http://untappedcities.com/2013/03/15/nycs-pneumatic-tube-mail-
network/)

[http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/pneumatic-
tu...](http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/pneumatic-tubes.pdf)

~~~
Gustomaximus
I've seen these in some apartment buildings in Norway. Except a truck would
still come by periodically and suck out the garbage from the buildings garbage
storage hold.

------
SapphireSun
I lived in NYC for well over a decade and I never knew this existed! This is
so cool. I wonder why it was limited to Roosevelt Island, the system is so
futuristic and clean. Maybe it costs a ton of money? It seems like it should
save money in sanitation staff over the long run assuming it's not too hard to
interconnect and keep the pressure up for new buildings.

------
fungi
could have been another article about japan. people rinse before bagging and
their in noticeably less smell.

what would be nice is a user pays system for garbage recycling in order to
create an incentive to reuse containers and reduce over packaging
(unfortunately this would inevitability create a problem of more illegal
dumping)

~~~
icelancer
We already have user pays in Seattle. It costs $ for larger and larger cans of
recycling and garbage (but not food waste, I don't think).

~~~
mstromb
It seems that recycling is a flat rate even if you get two cans. Jumping from
the smallest to largest compost can is ~$5. Trash is the really expensive one:
[http://www.seattle.gov/util/MyServices/Garbage/HouseResident...](http://www.seattle.gov/util/MyServices/Garbage/HouseResidentsGarbage/GarbageRates/index.htm)

There's been a big push around composting lately, to the point where there
will be fines for having too many compostables in the trash. People were up in
arms over this, as it meant that the waste collection people would be rooting
around in your trash to determine if it was complaint, though apparently they
can't open opaque bags to check so it's pretty much a non-issue.

~~~
icelancer
This is already happening in my neighborhood/county at least. We separate our
stuff but we've seen other cans get ticketed for contaminated receptacles. (I
think it's mostly just warnings now, unless you are a habitual offender.)

Still, this is all a bunch of crap. This is a perfect thing to centralize and
no amount of shaming/fining the population is going to actually solve the
problem in the long run without causing major headaches and graft for the
waste management companies (oh, the stories I could tell about them).

------
omarforgotpwd
I was expecting an article about a new memory management algorithm. what's
wrong with me...

------
spitfire
Here I was thinking the New York Times had written an article on mark and
sweep...

I would have read that.

~~~
olenhad
My initial response was "link bait!"

------
tambourine_man
I thought it was a joke on memory management until I saw the domain.

Shows how narrow-minded this line of work has made me, I guess.

~~~
xirdstl
That was my first reaction also.

I wouldn't think too much of it. It's reasonable for the likelihood of
'garbage collection' referring to memory management to be higher than
collecting trash on HN. Conversely, if you saw it on CNN and thought memory
management, then you might have a problem.

