Wheelie Bins

[BBB]

Apparently New York is getting wheelie bins.

They have been in situ for quite a while down under.

The Guardian explains...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...a-rats-comment

Best not deposit a dead body in your green bin though (someone has since been charged with murder)...

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-...ping/104067104

[open roader]

Leave the bins loaded long enough and the rats will chew right through the plastic bin body - from experience.

Kinda surprised the Big Apple is yet to sample the peak of civilization aka the wheelie bin.

I hate the noise of bins being dragged - 'Urban Thunder' I say. However, just another din for NYC.

[j44ke]

Building next door to our small 7 floor building is a block-thru, meaning it is 10 floors tall with one building half on 16th St and one building half on 15th St connected by an enclosed breezeway between blocks and takes up roughly 1/3 of the block on both streets. They produce a pile of contractor trash bags 20 feet long and 4-5 feet high every other day for trash pickup. I cannot understand how they will be able to assemble enough rolling bins of appropriate size to manage that volume of garbage, let alone get them in and out of their building's basement which has only a regular-sized fire door exit 12' below sidewalk grade with a flight of stairs up. And that's just one large apartment building in a city of 8.5 million people. Plus even on a good day (summer Sunday morning when the city is empty) access to the curb for one of these automated trash trucks is impossible.

Things that seem practical in other cities of the world can be logistical nightmares in NYC. And that's without cockatoos.

Brooklyn tried to do food waste recycling but the volume of food waste overwhelmed the provider of those services in 3 months.

[sk_tle]

I don't really subscribe to that poor excuse north americans always raise which is basically : we can't do better because we won't do better.

[bigbill]

I have an alarm on my phone that goes off every Monday morning at 8am that reminds me to wheel the bin to the street. We only have pickup one day a week so if I forget, the garage gets a little gamey. I can't leave the bin outside because of coyotes and other desert dwellers. My neighbor found a 4' diamondback rattler in the shade of his.

[caleb]

It seems like part of any solution has to simply be producing less waste. Less packaging, less single-use plastic, less of everything that goes in the landfill. How much of these garbage mountains are just takeout containers and mail-order packaging?

Our American way of addressing urban garbage and litter has mostly been to make it incredibly easy and cheap to throw things in the trash, probably so people don't dump it in the street or burn it in their backyards because we are presumed to be cavemen. It's entirely free to throw more away on the margin. That's bonkers.

It took me about a decade of living in Minneapolis to realize that there is an option for a 30 or 35 gallon rolly bin instead of the 55 or 60 gallon size. Only saves a buck or two a month, though. And it is absolutely the norm for households of two people to fill the jumbo size every week to overflowing.

We need to stop with the garbage.

[htwoopup]

Building next door to our small 7 floor building is a block-thru, meaning it is 10 floors tall with one building half on 16th St and one building half on 15th St connected by an enclosed breezeway between blocks and takes up roughly 1/3 of the block on both streets. They produce a pile of contractor trash bags 20 feet long and 4-5 feet high every other day for trash pickup. I cannot understand how they will be able to assemble enough rolling bins of appropriate size to manage that volume of garbage, let alone get them in and out of their building's basement which has only a regular-sized fire door exit 12' below sidewalk grade with a flight of stairs up. And that's just one large apartment building in a city of 8.5 million people. Plus even on a good day (summer Sunday morning when the city is empty) access to the curb for one of these automated trash trucks is impossible.

Things that seem practical in other cities of the world can be logistical nightmares in NYC. And that's without cockatoos.

Brooklyn tried to do food waste recycling but the volume of food waste overwhelmed the provider of those services in 3 months.

The compost thing in the UES is great. It is a shame that a lot of folks didn’t want it in buildings so they delayed that. But I go to a street corner 2 blocks away. There are bins every couple of blocks. Up where I am these things are actually being used to the point that they have to empty them now every single day. If you don’t put your stuff in there by 8 PM it is probably going to be filled.

The real answer to your question is going to be when they finally get the courage to put the bins in like in Barcelona. Of course, that will require to get rid of a bunch of the free alternate side of the street parking. People will howl. I never understood why so much of our taxpayer dollars go to providing free parking to 20% or so of residents who own cars, but I am a cyclist who also doesn’t understand how a bunch of people from New Jersey and Westchester managed to get us to kill congestion pricing so they could take up our roads with 100 square foot cars with one driver and not pay for the use. But it will also solve a bunch of other problems that we cyclists have in this fine city.

The thing about the compost….half of the resulting gases goes to run the composting operation at those egg like buildings by the Kosciusko Bridge…the other half was supposed to be mixed in with regular LNG through the (now owned/called) PSEG system in Long Island but they never connected to it so that half of the methane is just burned off heating the atmosphere. Of course, if it was in landfill it would just all go into the atmosphere so I guess we are ahead of the game in a way.

[BBB]

Building next door to our small 7 floor building is a block-thru, meaning it is 10 floors tall with one building half on 16th St and one building half on 15th St connected by an enclosed breezeway between blocks and takes up roughly 1/3 of the block on both streets. They produce a pile of contractor trash bags 20 feet long and 4-5 feet high every other day for trash pickup. I cannot understand how they will be able to assemble enough rolling bins of appropriate size to manage that volume of garbage, let alone get them in and out of their building's basement which has only a regular-sized fire door exit 12' below sidewalk grade with a flight of stairs up. And that's just one large apartment building in a city of 8.5 million people. Plus even on a good day (summer Sunday morning when the city is empty) access to the curb for one of these automated trash trucks is impossible.

Things that seem practical in other cities of the world can be logistical nightmares in NYC. And that's without cockatoos.

Brooklyn tried to do food waste recycling but the volume of food waste overwhelmed the provider of those services in 3 months.

Yes well I guess my suburban street and three wheelie bins (four actually as we have two for recycling) is a world away from NY. We are yet to get the purple lidded bins, but no doubt that will come in time.

On the other hand, Tokyo is a massive city and yet they have a complex rubbish disposal system and it is clean as a whistle.

[j44ke]

Yes well I guess my suburban street and three wheelie bins (four actually as we have two for recycling) is a world away from NY. We are yet to get the purple lidded bins, but no doubt that will come in time.

On the other hand, Tokyo is a massive city and yet they have a complex rubbish disposal system and it is clean as a whistle.

If a NYker tried to be as clean as a Tokyo-ite, they would explode. Messily.

[johnmdesigner]

The compost thing in the UES is great. It is a shame that a lot of folks didn’t want it in buildings so they delayed that. But I go to a street corner 2 blocks away. There are bins every couple of blocks. Up where I am these things are actually being used to the point that they have to empty them now every single day. If you don’t put your stuff in there by 8 PM it is probably going to be filled.

The real answer to your question is going to be when they finally get the courage to put the bins in like in Barcelona. Of course, that will require to get rid of a bunch of the free alternate side of the street parking. People will howl. I never understood why so much of our taxpayer dollars go to providing free parking to 20% or so of residents who own cars, but I am a cyclist who also doesn’t understand how a bunch of people from New Jersey and Westchester managed to get us to kill congestion pricing so they could take up our roads with 100 square foot cars with one driver and not pay for the use. But it will also solve a bunch of other problems that we cyclists have in this fine city.

The thing about the compost….half of the resulting gases goes to run the composting operation at those egg like buildings by the Kosciusko Bridge…the other half was supposed to be mixed in with regular LNG through the (now owned/called) PSEG system in Long Island but they never connected to it so that half of the methane is just burned off heating the atmosphere. Of course, if it was in landfill it would just all go into the atmosphere so I guess we are ahead of the game in a way.

Well said.

Street parking for residents only with yearly renewal and proof of residency.
Permanent bins streetside.
Make Amazon pay for the street areas where they unload their trucks as well as collecting the unbelievable amount of corrugated material they generate.
Make Columbia and NYU pay for extra street and garbage pickup for the unbelievable amount of trash that their students generate.

Oh well. Like the public toilets it will never happen.
It only took them 150 years to figure out how to put garbage into a sealed can.

[72gmc]

The rat that ran across my boots on its way to a LES sidewalk smorgasbord knows bins are the answer. They won’t solve everything, though … this week I’ve been holding my breath while riding past garbage and food waste bins that are sitting in the Seattle sun.