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/
OMD that is amazing
Neat!
@helenczerski @davidho 🤯 it makes so much sense, and yet, I wouldn't have imagined it to be the case.
Visited there last year & never realized this!!! So cool!
@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.)
@helenczerski @davidho it's pretty cool but why are they mixing all the separated waste into one pipe?
Strong Duff brewery vibes.
@helenczerski @davidho I have a cunning plan. We repurpose the enormous pipes of our district heating system for a pneumatic recycling waste transport waste thing…
That said, having seen what ended up in one of our our "food waste" bins today, I kind of of wonder whether we'll ever get people to do even the simplest sorting e.g. food vs plastic/metal/cardboard/anything else. Sigh.
@helenczerski @davidho This is the hyperloop I wanted...
@helenczerski @davidho This is the future that pneumatic waste tube YIMBYs want
@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.
@helenczerski @davidho
I think that's miraculous!😃👍👍
@helenczerski @davidho It's all fun and games until someone emags the reclaimer #spacestation14
@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 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 think Finland has them too?
@helenczerski @davidho things go swoosh is amazing - especially sorted into the correct swoosh 🙌🏼
@helenczerski @davidho That level of excitement sense entirely reasonable to me.
When my mother was small, she thought post boxes did something similar. She was deeply disappointed to discover that they don't!
Image above: a CAD style drawing of said pneumatic waste transport system--shows some bins on a street with underground tubes connecting
#Alt4You #accessibility
@helenczerski @davidho that’s marvelous
@helenczerski @davidho Roosevelt Island in NYC has something very similar by the same company, but it's much older https://youtu.be/nfM4cjDoo6o
@helenczerski @SallyStrange https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCh250tpTP0 i like to imagine this song is piped in while the trash is going through the tubes
@helenczerski @davidho I would love to see how they clean these
It would cut down on waste that could be lost in transit by a significant amount. Plus it removes the need for large waste management vehicles to go around collecting materials.
@helenczerski @davidho ok that is very surprising and cool
@helenczerski @davidho I like most things that go WHOOSH. But this has a lot more going for it than just that.
@helenczerski @davidho
@tayfonay
So... What's the point of having separate bins if the pneumatic mix all together anyway? 🤣
*crying*
NYC is so backwards!!
Mayor Addams WHY don't we have THIS? WHY?
I demand pneumatic garbage and it should have cool steampunk SDNY seals on the stations.
You said you'd clean up the city? Did you mean it???
@helenczerski @davidho Your excitement is warranted. What a clean, clever system!
@helenczerski @davidho That's very neat! I admit I'm curious about the efficiency of the system but that doesn't make it less cool.
@helenczerski @davidho Walt Disney World uses these too, at least in the Magic Kingdom
Meanwhile, citizen Trump is unable to satisfactorily flush his own toilet.
@helenczerski @davidho so very cool. Should be part of the Infrastructure Bill in the U.S.
@helenczerski @davidho Disney World is like this too. Some places used to do this for mail!
@helenczerski Reminds me of the pneumatic mail tubes we used to have in the city... if only we developed that technology more after cars came on the scene.
Dang, I want a citybuilder where you can engineer off-the-wall stuff like this . . .
@helenczerski @davidho NYC has one of these systems on Roosevelt Island! It’s extremely cool :D
@helenczerski How old is this system? This is amazing and thoughtful so a definite no-no here in America.
@helenczerski @davidho same in Disney World!
@helenczerski @davidho ENTIRELY REASONABLE
@helenczerski @davidho Holy garbage that's so cool!
@helenczerski @davidho
Brilliant!
@helenczerski @davidho damn that’s actually kinda crazy!
@helenczerski @davidho @whfsdude and then you go to Taiwan and it’s deafening Beethoven blasting through the neighborhood as the garbage trucks roll through haha
@helenczerski @davidho - Norway really is just on another frikkin level. 0th world country.
@helenczerski @davidho Amazing indeed👍
@helenczerski @davidho Used in the Netherlands town called Almere for many years
@helenczerski @davidho
I grew up with this in our buildings stairwell. It was in the central column of the spiral stairs. My whole suburb had it. 1970s system though, no separation of trash types and all went to a trash incinerator turning trash into district heating.
@helenczerski @davidho
These are in Stockholm Sweden as well. They recycle almost everything, and they have a working ski slope on their waste management building.
@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 But doesn't it clog all the time?
@davidho
@helenczerski @davidho SHOOP TUBES!
Ah! I suddenly understand the weird design of the bins outside the holiday apartment we rented last summer in St Lary, Haute Pyrénées, France.
This is cool.
@helenczerski There's a video that explains the Bergen system here.
@helenczerski @davidho Suddenly, not everything is quite so terrible in this world. Wonderful things do still exist.
@helenczerski @davidho why is this not promoted by the Norwegian tourist board ?
@helenczerski @davidho I think this is the same system we have in #Barcelona - it works pretty well here.
@helenczerski @davidho
For me it seems like a over complicated solution without a big problem to be solved. In my neighborhood there are coming around 4 garbage trucks per month. By this a negligible pice of the traffic. Besides maybe the highest density areas, it seems like a expensive or/and expensive possibility for the trash. A stuck pipe cut of all garbage disposal. A broken truck can be just exchanged with a working one.
@helenczerski @davidho It sounds great. But I have mixed feelings about it... (1) it seems to be in line with the habit of modern country to hide/cancel/ignore everything that is waste: push a button, forget about it. (2) As everything that is *very* efficient, it seems brittle and a nightmare to repair. (3) I'd rather have some reverse system, that pneumatically deliver Frech fries directly on my work desk.
@helenczerski New York's Roosevelt Island has a system like this, but I hear it's been a bit of a maintenance nightmare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfM4cjDoo6o
https://nebula.tv/videos/hai-roosevelt-islands-pneumatic-trash-system
@helenczerski
Fun fact: in Paris, early last century, the mail was delivered with a pneumatic system. People would sometimes receive mail a few times a day. Incredibly fast system, reliable. And yeah; my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother lived there, they got mail like this ❤
@helenczerski I'm with you on this. This is considerably exciting!
@helenczerski @davidho it was tried in other places like a part of NY too, but at least there it’s apparently very costly and difficult to maintain.
@helenczerski @davidho I UNDERSTAND YOUR EXCITMENT (because, as a #mindustry player, I've a fondness for complex routing systems). However, I must note this requires a certain investment : all roads have to be open for pipes to be installed. And, maybe, in crowded undergrounds (think about Paris, London), it may not be easy to have those pipes find ways. But in other cases, it's incredible !
@helenczerski @davidho And when you back I need to introduce you to some cool, like-minded people from the cuckoo in UCL’s nest, the university within a university that is the Bartlett. We’ll get some data and dig. Maybe we should adopt a slogan “Dig we must for a better UCL”… (if you don’t know what I’m referring to, maybe David will get the reference…)
@helenczerski @davidho Not sure if parody, but love this either way. 😅
@helenczerski @davidho I guess one thing about this that is kind of sad is that it probably makes dumpster diving impossible. Otherwise it’s really cool
@helenczerski @davidho
blew my mind when i learned this, hehe
@helenczerski @davidho This is amazing.
There were even people who thought about such a system for mail and package. Just think about how cool that would be.
For example: https://www.smartcityloop.de/
@helenczerski @davidho could you pleade add an image description for the visually impared among us?
@helenczerski @davidho They're amazing, aren't they? Sometimes Scandinavia is like a whole new world
@helenczerski
Wow, that is really great! I completely understand your excitement 😀
@davidho @petros
@helenczerski my biggest fear is that the chart represents them all going into a single pipe making it seem like the recycling has no effect