Waste Management

[danbrotherston]

Basically 100% of these issues are fixed with the designs we have in the Netherlands.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1858405,...&entry=ttu

This is the end of my block, there is a bin here and one at the other end. The top pedestal is where you put your garbage. You scan a card, open the door put your bag in, close the door and the bag falls into the bin underneath.

Eventually a truck comes and pulls the whole thing out of the ground and empties.

We don't pay per bag, but we could because the card is tied to our address. There is no garbage coming out because you cannot get the garbage back out of the bin without a literal crane. Everyone with an address has a card, so the municipality would know if there was abuse, but you also physically cannot dump more than household waste. And because the bins are tapped every time they are used, the municipality knows when they are full.

Honestly this is one of the very many examples of a thing that is just obviously better here and I cannot explain why. Like sure, changing policies to built bike lanes and good cities is hard politically and socially, but this kind of thing isn't, there's no laws against it.

Again, not saying this, politically, would be even slightly an option for suburban homeowners but there are lots of condominiums and complexes where communal bins are used, and this would be a great solution there, and yet, it does not exist in the continent as far as I know.

That doesn't solve the most egregious offence of people dumping outside of the bins when they aren't even close to full. But honestly, I'm not sure what logic they are using in the first place so I don't know how to approach solving that.

I wonder how the expense breakdown looks between what we do now for suburbs vs what I have vs what you linked with electrical and networking hookups.

And I'm curious if you know how often your trash ends up being collected? My underground bin is emptied every single night (usually a box truck has to come by to pick up the spillover by hand, then a crane truck for garbage, and a crane truck for recycling). I'm not sure how feasible it would be to do more often, particularly during the busy daytime I think the large crane trucks would have trouble fitting in.

Well it does in our city at least because everyone has access to the bins, and they're never full, so there is no reason to dump stuff...but I guess if they were used in only a few places, that would remain, but it isn't actually the bins causing that...people who are motivated to dump, don't actually care where it ends up, that's the whole point of dumping.

I'm sure networking is handled by cellular or smart city networking so the incremental cost is almost zero, as for power, the thing just has a small solar panel on top. The incremental cost of the electronics is minimal for the bin, although I'm sure building the server and software infrastructure for it would be more expensive.

Your bin gets emptied every night?! That's nuts! In Canada, our condo building had 2 small bins (half the size of a normal dumpster---they were sized so the superintendent could (just barely) wheel them around by hand), for a building of 65 two bedroom units, and they were emptied weekly (they were inside so we had limited additional dumping admittedly). Those bins were rarely overfilled. Being emptied every night seems extreme, I'm imagining a building holding 7 times as many people, and yet still only having a single standard sized dumpster, that seems like the fault of the developer cheaping out on garbage infrastructure.

As for our location here, I'm not actually sure how often it is emptied. They do so on an irregular schedule, so while I see it occasionally, I don't always see it emptied. I'm generally home 4 days a week, but I only see it emptied at most once a month, so extrapolating it's probably emptied a couple times a month is probably in the ballpark.

It's also worth noting that our recycling bins are collected only roughly monthly (paper is actually monthly, plastic + metal is every 4 weeks) and compost is collected every other week. I'm sure people would be up in arms about this idea in Kitchener, but it's really no big deal IMO, the bins are large enough they easily hold a months worth of stuff, and then the service is cheaper to provide. And the trucks which collect the compost (you know, with the big claw arm on them) are even electric.

[ijmorlan]

That doesn't solve the most egregious offence of people dumping outside of the bins when they aren't even close to full. But honestly, I'm not sure what logic they are using in the first place so I don't know how to approach solving that.

Some people are just inexplicable. I’m not sure why they would even bother dumping near the actual trash receptacles — at that point, why not just throw the garbage wherever?

I remember when there was a garbage strike (maybe in Toronto? might have been here) seeing footage on the news of huge quantities of garbage set out on the street, including couches. My thought was that if there was a garbage strike of up to a few weeks, it wouldn’t even occur to me to put garbage out — I would just retain it until the strike was over. But then, I once accumulated plastic containers for a couple of years before they became recyclable (although given updated knowledge, maybe I should really say “collectible”, not “recyclable” but I didn’t realize that at the time).

[dtkvictim]

Well it does in our city at least because everyone has access to the bins, and they're never full, so there is no reason to dump stuff...but I guess if they were used in only a few places, that would remain, but it isn't actually the bins causing that...people who are motivated to dump, don't actually care where it ends up, that's the whole point of dumping.

I'm sure networking is handled by cellular or smart city networking so the incremental cost is almost zero, as for power, the thing just has a small solar panel on top. The incremental cost of the electronics is minimal for the bin, although I'm sure building the server and software infrastructure for it would be more expensive.

Your bin gets emptied every night?! That's nuts! In Canada, our condo building had 2 small bins (half the size of a normal dumpster---they were sized so the superintendent could (just barely) wheel them around by hand), for a building of 65 two bedroom units, and they were emptied weekly (they were inside so we had limited additional dumping admittedly). Those bins were rarely overfilled. Being emptied every night seems extreme, I'm imagining a building holding 7 times as many people, and yet still only having a single standard sized dumpster, that seems like the fault of the developer cheaping out on garbage infrastructure.

As for our location here, I'm not actually sure how often it is emptied. They do so on an irregular schedule, so while I see it occasionally, I don't always see it emptied. I'm generally home 4 days a week, but I only see it emptied at most once a month, so extrapolating it's probably emptied a couple times a month is probably in the ballpark.

It's also worth noting that our recycling bins are collected only roughly monthly (paper is actually monthly, plastic + metal is every 4 weeks) and compost is collected every other week. I'm sure people would be up in arms about this idea in Kitchener, but it's really no big deal IMO, the bins are large enough they easily hold a months worth of stuff, and then the service is cheaper to provide. And the trucks which collect the compost (you know, with the big claw arm on them) are even electric.

All things considered I don't mind my garbage system, but it's far from perfect as some people here are claiming is all. It reflects the quality of people using it just as much as the quality of the system itself. It's possible expanded access could reduce some of the issues I have, and I'm sure less central locations would function perfectly well. If I'm not misremember, I've seen quite a few newer townhouse developments have communal underground garbage bins too.

And yes, every single night. And it's either practically full or overflowing every single night. And we have 2 large underground bins for garbage, and 1 for cardboard (no other recycling). It's meant to serve the entire block which probably houses a similar number of people as your building did, but also includes quite a few restaurants. I find the restaurants are very good about not leaving garbage on the ground outside of the bins; it's the people pulling up in vehicles to offload huge amounts of trash that cause the issues and are the most likely to just drop it on the ground instead of in the bins. I'm sure a lot of them are (dubious) businesses who don't want to pay for the dump.

[dtkvictim]

Some people are just inexplicable. I’m not sure why they would even bother dumping near the actual trash receptacles — at that point, why not just throw the garbage wherever?

I remember when there was a garbage strike (maybe in Toronto? might have been here) seeing footage on the news of huge quantities of garbage set out on the street, including couches. My thought was that if there was a garbage strike of up to a few weeks, it wouldn’t even occur to me to put garbage out — I would just retain it until the strike was over. But then, I once accumulated plastic containers for a couple of years before they became recyclable (although given updated knowledge, maybe I should really say “collectible”, not “recyclable” but I didn’t realize that at the time).

Yeah, they go through 99% of the effort just to give up at the end. Resulting in an entire extra truck and crew to come by and pick things up by hand instead of just having the robotic crane trucks. Plenty of people also put their trash in the cardboard bin and cardboard in the trash bins, so they might just be illiterate...

[KentHD]

I wonder how this will effect the enforcement of bag limits. These 240L bins are fairly large, so people may end up throwing more in the trash if they think they're allowed to fill them. Plus, the bag limits won't be enforced if the operator is just someone pressing a button in the cab of the truck. Hopefully this extra volume doesn't end up reducing the life span of our dump.

There's a weight limit on the bibs. I'm pretty sure the trucks with the extending arms weigh each as it's picked up and will leave it if it's overweight.