Waste Management

[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.