NYC's Trash-Sucking Tubes May Be Upgraded, Expanded

derekmead writes "When urban planners were trying to turn New York's Roosevelt Island from a haven for the disabled and the mentally ill into a liveable city, they got utopian. Lying beneath their plans was an unusual technology: a series of tubes that literally suck garbage from buildings at speeds up to 60 miles per hour to a central collection point, where the trash is taken off the island by truck or barge. Theoretically, that eliminates the emissions and traffic caused by giant garbage trucks, and makes trash sorting easier. Now, more than thirty years after the 'AVAC,' or Automated Vacuum Collection System, was installed, Envac, the Swedish company that built it, is exploring how to upgrade it and even extend the system to other parts of the city. Under a new feasibility study conducted by City University and funded by two city agencies, the easiest option would be to stretch the current system south, to cover the new technology campuses being built on Roosevelt Island by Cornell University and the Technion. "

As the article says

[YrWrstNtmr]

It works, you just have to be mindful of what you put in it.
Stereos? Rebar? I guess people will be idiots.

Big enough to suck in a small child or pet.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

But what could go wrong?

Re:Big enough to suck in a small child or pet.

[PPH]

So we'll still have to hack the adult bodies into smaller pieces?

How to clean them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it can be done properly, but all I've seen from trash tubes are disgustingly dirty chutes that could not be properly cleaned and tended to attract cockroaches and the like. Either by accident (like a trash bag ripping inside the tube) or by improper use, they tend to become dirty and are impracticable to clean. Water pipes work because, well, there's water running on them. And trash cans, if they eventually become dirty, can be moved to be cleaned or at least replaced.

Here in France, most (if not all) buildings that have some sort of garbage chute are forbidden to use them, precisely for the lack of hygiene they represent when improperly used. You really need some obligatory hard casing to prevent the trash from spilling into the tube itself. Vaccum can help, but some nasty liquids are quite sticky once they touch the walls...