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Comment by NovemberWhiskey | Hacker News Reader

You live in an apartment building that's 47 stories tall and has 350 units. Do you expect all of the residents individually to take bins out to the front of the building?

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I've lived in a big apartment complex before. The invention that solves this problem is called a chute and a dumpster.

Buildings here have chutes and compactors. There aren't any alleys in Manhattan and the sidewalks are mostly quite narrow. The solution would be to eliminate some parking to hold bins that can be emptied by trucks but it hasn't been politically feasible.

If you have chutes and trash rooms already, then there's no point to bringing the stuff out to the street for holding. In my building the trash would be taken from the trash room directly to the truck. The chute would just drop into a dumpster that workers would wheel out and the truck would flip it into the bed. Seems like it takes less labor than having workers bring bags to the road and then have the trash workers spend time putting the bags in the truck by hand versus with a hydraulic arm.

> Seems like it takes less labor than having workers bring bags to the road and then have the trash workers spend time putting the bags in the truck by hand versus with a hydraulic arm.

You're getting to the heart of the problem. That would mean fewer workers and the sanitation union has a long and ironically sordid past of ensuring that less workers are never needed.

Well there are no alleys remember, so nowhere to pull up a truck other that on the street in front of the building. It’s also worth noting that the sanitation workers union fiercely opposes any mechanization in trash collection, the workers toss bags by hand. It’s absolutely ridiculous to see in person.

I understand what you're saying but NYC isn't exactly the only city in the world with large apartment buildings.

You would expect the apt building provides dumpsters

Usually such buildings would have a garbage room with big bins that get emptied regularly - at least in sane cities.

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