8/11/2023 0 Comments Smart trash collection![]() ![]() “These bins aren’t designed for broad public participation, they’re designed for composting aficionados,” he said in an interview. If successful, the program could expand to other neighborhoods by next year, forming a sort of “Citi Bike of compost,” according to sanitation department spokesperson Joshua Goodman.Īccording to Goldstein, however, if the goal is to increase participation in composting, the bins aren’t going to cut it. Their purpose is to provide a round-the-clock location for New Yorkers to drop off their organic food waste, rather than waiting on the weekly green market. Sensors inside the bins alert the Sanitation Department when they’re full, and Bluetooth technology allows users to open them with an app or, in the Astoria version of the pilot, a key fob obtained by the city – a safeguard against naive passersby tossing their trash onto the heaps of decomposing rinds and peels. ![]() “You’ll never get the widespread participation in this program by focusing on bins that city residents have to drag scraps of food to on a regular basis,” said Eric Goldstein, the New York City environment director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Despite being a potent emitter of greenhouse gas, Mayor Bill de Blasio was cutting funding for the collection of food and yard scraps even before the pandemic - all but guaranteeing the city will fall well short of its goal to cut the waste sent to landfills by 90 percent by 2030. The droid-like containers, dubbed “Smart Bins,” are part of a first-of-its-kind composting program launched by the Department of Sanitation and the Downtown Alliance, a Lower Manhattan business group.īut for composting enthusiasts, the bins are little more than a bleak reminder of the de Blasio administration’s failings in the arena of organic recycling. “I don’t know what you dispose there,” Bell said. “I haven’t seen anyone use it,” said Cesar Bell, a florist whose shop overlooks one of the containers in the Financial District - and whose floral detritus would make an ideal deposit for the robot bins. On a recent morning, most New Yorkers greeted them with a mix of indifference and confusion. Unlike their neighboring receptacles, the new bins were sealed shut, snapping open only in response to a key fob or phone app. This is also an unsustainable way of working - the more vehicles on the road carrying out unnecessary collections means more carbon emissions are released into our planet’s atmosphere.They arrived without warning on the street corners of Astoria and Lower Manhattan earlier this month: bright orange bins, next to the trash and recycling cans, soliciting food and yard scraps from passing pedestrians. This means high labor and fuel costs – which residents ultimately foot the bill for. This means that waste collection trucks would drive the same collection route and empty every single waste container – even if the waste container did not need emptying. Traditionally, municipalities and waste management companies would operate on a fixed collection route and schedule. And in today’s ever-technological world, an innovative and data-driven approach is the only way forward. The old way of doing waste management is highly inefficient. Late waste collections lead to overflowing bins, unsanitary environments, citizen complaints, illegal dumping, and increased cleaning and collection costs.Įarly waste collections mean unnecessary carbon emissions, more traffic congestion, and higher running costs. Around 80% of waste collections happen at the wrong time.
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