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Comment by b800h | Hacker News Reader

Do you not have wheelie-bins in the US?

In the US, yes, but in New York we generally just pile up our trash bags on the sidewalk on garbage day. We don't have alleyways between our buildings and most of the street space is taken up by free car storage.

NY serves a rat banquet on the regular and pikachu-faces at the amount of rats that attend.

> most of the street space is taken up by free car storage.

'Subsidised' I think is the more correct term here.

The thing being subsidised is free on street parking. Free on street parking is not subsidising the already existing street space.

most of it doesn't cost any money. I believe "free" is an accurate description.

The land is some of the most valuable and costliest to maintain in the world. The absence of a parking meter just means someone else is footing the bill.

Yes, and I think that was implied already?

This is such useless pedantry. We all know what was meant.

They're addressing a common misnomer. And one of the costs of street parking is that the parking spot is free. It ties right in to the discussion on the cost of street parking here: can't put trashcans on the street, garbage truck can't access trash cans from the street.

Free as in healthcare.

How often is garbage day?

Also a bit wild to me that there's not like a communal dumpster.

Some population dense cities also do underground dumpsters, has that been floated?

> How often is garbage day?

For general household trash, if you are eligible for DSNY collection, it's two times per week except for some holidays. Recycling and compost are once a week. If you contract to a private garbage collection company, it's whatever you specify in the contract.

> Also a bit wild to me that there's not like a communal dumpster.

Large apartment buildings of course do have trash chutes leading to a dumpster of some sort. But inside or outside smaller buildings, there is no space.

> Some population dense cities also do underground dumpsters, has that been floated?

There is an underground garbage handling system on Roosevelt Island. The idea of underground dumpsters in other parts of the city been floated, but it's impossible because there is too much density of existing underground infrastructure and much of this infrastructure is not mapped, making it impossible to plan an excavation project of such a scale. See e.g. https://dsny.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/reports/fut... (pdf). (There are also interesting engineering questions of how underground dumpsters would work after heavy snowfall.)

Interesting. Reading the report it looks like the biggest issue any sort of communal trash system faces is we simply don't have that in the US. NY would need a lot of trash trucks which are only being manufactured outside the US. They'd be one of the only cities doing this as well.

It looks like underground would be an option, but the big deal breaker is potentially needing more frequent pickup and specialized trucks.

> NY would need a lot of trash trucks which are only being manufactured outside the US.

Put them on a boat? Or are the legal hurdles to importing so high?

It becomes an ongoing maintenance problem even if you import them - if nobody in the US has experience servicing them, and nobody else is buying them, then you end up being the sole subsidizer of the cost of things like having a stockpile of parts around.

Cities like rome that have real archeolorical things going back centuries and they can dig easier than nyc. Quit using that cop out if they can do it you can too.

> Large apartment buildings of course do have trash chutes leading to a dumpster of some sort

The bags therein get put out on the street in a big pile, however. Or they did before the new bin situation.

The volume gets pretty intimidating; for Manhattan, you're talking around 140 cubic yards of garbage per block per week [0.1 yard / person, 1400 people / block], which would be ~4 of the 40-yard dumpsters (the 8 x 8 x 22' ones you'll see outside construction sites, roll-on/off trucks) per block.

That they're able to collect that much garbage anyway means it's not an unsolvable problem, but going from using that much space once a week, in the form of piles of garbage on garbage day [with the remainder of the time it being scattered in smaller piles in buildings' garbage rooms], to 24/7, means you're losing like 12 parking spots per block, or like half a building lot per block, if you're storing them off the street.

Noting says you need to wait a full week between collecting garbage.

That’s the thing about changing how things work, you can change multiple things at the same time.

Oh no, less parking, however will we recover?

It's the same amount of trash either way.

By your calculation, they would get 12 parking spots worth of random small pockets of space back per block. In reality, it would be more than that in usable space, because who want to do anything directly next to a distributed pile of garbage?

I suspect the NYC underground is already so crowded with pipes and cables and under-sidewalk storage areas and other things there won't be much space for such dumpsters there.

I feel like people would sue the city if they had to walk more than a minute to dump out their trash in NYC. I was there for a few months when the trash bins were being tested out, and seeing people complain about it was… interesting?

Were the bins in the street and not on the sidewalk for this test? These complaint were likely really about taking away a parking spot.

People would rather walk through a maze of garbage bags than make things slightly less convenient while driving. We are way too car-brained.

Yup, those were the exact complaints actually! A bit wild to my stupid brain, but it is what it is.

Where do you store full trash bags in between pickups?

Still on the sidewalk. NYC is perpetually full of trash bags in comparison to other major cities (or non major cities)

This sounds so wild. Surely it would be much more efficient, for space and picking up, to have containers for trash.

there is a push to use garbage containers, and the requirements have partially rolled out, but it's a very controversial political issue.

On the street.

Go to Google Maps, zoom in on New York City, then drop a Streetview pin randomly anywhere in the city.

Chances are very, VERY, good that just by panning, not moving, you'll find a trash bag dumped on the sidewalk.

There are garbage bins in NYC. Here's one: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7238555,-73.9968645,3a,75y,5...

Yep a trash bin right next to: "trash bag dumped on the sidewalk"

It's funnier if you don't explain the joke.

That’s assuming it was funny in the first place.

In trash rooms, hallways or alleyways if one exists (common outside of Manhattan).

Depositing trash bags on the street is legal?

For real? I thought that was a movie thing. Then again I though steam release manholes was a movie thing too...

New York was weirdly built without alleys so there is a legitimate issue of where do you put the bins when it's not trash day that almost every other city doesn't have

Well, they find the space to store their trash right now. So they definitely have enough space. The amount of trash would presumably roughly be the same before and after this change.

Eg they could sacrifice some street parking spots for the bins.

They could even charge the bins the same amount of money they charge for street parking (and fold these costs into the costs for trash disposal they charge trash producers).

> Eg they could sacrifice some street parking spots for the bins.

Taking away curb parking is one of the most heated political issues in the US.

It's controversial enough to take away parking to make the road safer for pedestrians and other drivers (new daylighting law in SF), so I can't imagine how hard it would be to do it for some trash cans.

Someone should try to campaign on turning all NYC sidewalks into parking spots.

As sibling implied basically every other major city in the US uses bins or dumpsters. Except NYC.

In New York City, the trash workers union prevents dumpsters from being used, which would kill jobs. Remember: trash is not a problem to deal with. It's a solution to unemployment.

I moved back to the south after living out west for 20 years and it is insane the amount of trash dropped by trash workers while they are dumping bins. Part of it is cultural in that trash is literally piled at the street in bins of varying condition vs out west where you know if it doesn't fit in your 90 gal bin it ain't getting picked up by the robot arm.

The transition from "pile everything in a heap" to "if it's not in your wheelie bin it's not getting picked up" happens pretty quickly. Just need the garbage company to specify that in their contract with the municipality. I honestly miss being able to pile up oddly shaped pieces of trash though. Now if you have something weird, it's just not going to get picked up and you have to figure out how to get it to the dump.

I don't see much of that in North Carolina.

I've heard that it was that it was because it would remove parking space.

But if what you are saying is true, that's what you get for not allowing multi-concern unions. Our union branch that take care of trash collection workers is also responsible for municipal cleaning workers, as well as dump workers: making the job worse for cleaning and dump workers is just not something the union would push for.

Or alternatively, it's what you get for allowing unions. (At least unions that have special extra rights compared to any old club that people can form.)

Unions have obligations in the US. You can't organize a protest or strike for other professionals. You _have_ to follow some rule before and after a strike. You cannot "just stop working" (because some industrial processes, when let down, can destroy the whole factory). The right the unions got are written in blood, and honestly in the US, it seems to me they control workers a lot more than they protect their rights, at least since the 70s.

In any case, the US should destroy the unions by removing all legislation preventing work organization or giving them special rights, and let them reform as grassroot unions (your "old club that people can form") and let them grow from this point.

> You cannot "just stop working" (because some industrial processes, when let down, can destroy the whole factory).

Well, people in any old club can "just stop working". But they are facing contractual penalties including getting fired. And I think that's fair.

> In any case, the US should destroy the unions by removing all legislation preventing work organization or giving them special rights, and let them reform as grassroot unions (your "old club that people can form") and let them grow from this point.

Yes. Though removing the special legal rights (and the few obligations) from unions would basically destroy them.

You seems to believe unions appeared out of nowhere. Just remember that the NRA was initially created to limit firearms access for workers. When unions as they exist in the US are destroyed, something else might take their place. Hopefully it won't be new Luigi's but a better work organisation.

> You seems to believe unions appeared out of nowhere.

No, why?

The British monarchy also didn't spring out of nowhere, but that doesn't mean Britain couldn't turn into a republic, if they wanted to change their laws.

Here in Singapore we barely have any unions, or rather in practice unions barely have any influence.

Compare also https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/

Where would the dumpsters go? Serious question, the impression I get is that there is no room in many places in the city.

Dumpsters would go where trash goes now. Instead of trash sitting on the street, the same trash will sit inside dumpsters.

Parking spots that currently house individuals’s cars could be used for dumpsters instead.

Ignoring the political backlash around taking people's parking, I would instead point out the likely rate of hitting dumpsters in the street with how tightly packed people would park around them.

NYC was, for large stretches, built without the alleys that lots of other cities would use to store such bins, and I don't think you can easily accommodate the volumes of trash that people want to turn over with just street storage without significant logistical problems with how much you disrupt the flow of people in the city.

Even if we eat the cost of parking around residential locations, businesses have gotten used to using the space in front of their restaurants as additional seating, so cannibalizing that for dumpsters will cause massive backlash on that front, to say nothing of the nasty effects on people's desire to eat when sitting next to a dumpster.

I agree that NYC is slow moving on a lot of things, but this is also a genuinely hard problem.

What if all cars were required to haul trash?

They had plenty of room for on street restaurant expansions in many parts of the city.

Room would have to be found.

At this point, even massive dumpsters on the sidewalk would be an improvement.

That is at odds with the fact the article says they are using bins and picking them up 6 days a week, I don't see any union complaint here?

I thought the problem with it was the lack of space.

Well, the trash on the pavement is taking up space, too.

Proper bins could pile the trash higher, so they would take up less floor space than the random distributed piles.

And as other commenters point out, you could sacrifice some parking spots.

> could pile the trash higher

I don't actually think you can get denser storage, at the moment, than the raw piles of garbage bags. In some places, they are absolutely willing to pile them higher than people stand, sometimes, and proper individual trashcans would sacrifice some space for their size, and actual dumpsters would be pretty disruptive to place since there's not much in the way of locations to land them on.

The trash bag piles also have the nominal benefit that they're transitory - that is, you don't have to permanently say "this space will only be used for trash storage", and with a place with space at such a premium sometimes, that really does matter.

(I'm not fond of the bags either, but short of the city dropping a truly astonishing amount of money on trying to buy up properties on each block to keep dumpsters in, as far as I can see, just getting the rolling bins out and about is the best reduction you can hope for.)

There is plenty of space, but most of it is taken up by individuals’ cars.

> It's a solution to unemployment.

No, it's not. Just because a union opposes something doesn't mean it would cause unemployment.

It absolutely is a problem to be dealt with. I understand what you are implying but it actually is a problem

Is there a source on this? This is the second of two conspiracy theories I've heard, the other being that Reagan is somehow responsible for getting rid of the communal dumpsters that are claimed to have once existed.

That's a sign the city has useless excess population.

I once saw a rat trying to open a wheelie-bin and when it looked up to me, I could see it think: shit, I'm busted; they know we are smart.

Washington, DC, has had "supercans" for about forty years. But it still has rats, though I suppose many fewer than it might.

I live in a city that most of HN would look down their nose at.

We have "wheelie bins".

Most of HN has seen San Francisco. I doubt they'd look down too much.

Even that doesn't solve it because the truck is too powerful for the bin. Over time the lid breaks apart from the grabbing and flicking motion. Plus some trash inevitably slips proper placement. And animals are smart.

People are trying to sterilize rats or give them birth control now vs kill them. If you kill a rat, you still have the environment that could support a rat and one is liable to more in from the populations nearby you didn't kill. If you sterilize the rat and release it however, it keeps other new rats from moving in potentially in the maintenance of its territory and it could be doing this job for you for years while you try and sterilize the rest of the area. And eventually these rats will die, and if the great bulk has been sterilized in some way then you may actually eliminate or push back sterile rat populations out of certain areas.

>>Even that doesn't solve it because the truck is too powerful for the bin. Over time the lid breaks apart from the grabbing and flicking motion.

I feel like you and I live on a different planet. Here in the UK we have those wheelie bins, they get collected using an automated dumpster truck that tips them inside itself, and I'm yet to hear about one of these braking - they are made out of proper thick plastic. Unless by "over time" you mean like 20+ years?

https://www.wheeliebins.co.uk/blogs/news/everything-you-want...

No they last about 2 or 3 years in my experience, depending on how lucky you get with them. Everyone's bin is at least somewhat damaged. A few are missing the top entirely. I've replaced a bad bin once, free service from the city, but the replacement is already starting to crack on the corners where it slaps down onto the tips of the metal claw holding the bin. It is quite violent how it slaps the lid. Here is a video of the units they use:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXiywhZxZis

So no one cares that the trucks are clearly overpowered for the job and destroying bins every 2-3 years when other countries(maybe even other places in the US too?) have identical bins lasting 2 decades without any problem, even when using trucks that automatically dump the contents? Do you pay for replacement bins as residents, or does the city provide them? Either way, seems incredibly wasteful for something that is absolutely a solved problem.

Same here in Oregon. My bins are old (at least 16 years) and same as when I moved in.

I would think that is the truck was too strong, that could be adjusted. Or if city bought weak bins, they could be replaced by proper ones.

Here is the truck in action. I get only a couple years before the lid starts fragmenting at the corners and sometimes breaks at the hinge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXiywhZxZis

That looks like the standard bin and the claw is similar. But trucks here are gentler.

My guess is that your city designed trucks for speed at expense of destroying cans.

Australian checking in. Our wheelie bin lids cark it every decade or two, but I'd attribute that to sun exposure degrading them. The mechanical impact is just what finishes the job.

New York can hardly be called "the US" culturally

Nowhere in the US can be really. It's not as diverse culturally as "Europe" but it's more diverse than most countries by a lot.

This just in: huge country has a pluralistic cultural identity

Why?

Yeah how American is hip hop anyway?

Hip Hop has shifted as much as America has. The only big 2020s hip hop artist from NY is Cardi B. Then you have to realize she's mostly a pop act -- a majority of hip hop heads don't listen to female artists.

Yeah Cardi B is pop music.

And whoever heard of Lauryn Hill, Salt-n-Peppa, Erykah Badu, Eve, Lil Kim, Queen Latifah, Missy Elliot?

You're talking about basically 30 years ago.

That's an entire previous generation. Not speaking disrespectfully but none of who you mentioned have mainstream cultural relevance in _today's hip hop_. Kim and Missy come closest.

If your argument is going to be that New York is the cultural center of hip hop, who from New York is representing today's hip hop? Who is selling the albums?

My argument was that one of the most American things ever (hip hop) is actually rooted in NY.

The rest is a response to 'hip hop heads don't listen to female artists' so I mentioned a bunch of heavyweights. This can degenerate into 'no real scotsman' so whatever.

There is today a whole lot of pop artists that use hip hop aesthetics, but as usual the real stuff is very much underground.

The fallacy is actually named "No True Scotsman" for whatever that's worth.

C'mon really? In the Book of Fallacies they used the other word? Talk about pedantism.

Native New Yorker now living in the real America vouching for the accuracy of this comment.

The majority of the US shops at WalMart. New York City doesn't even have one.

But we have many Target. The K-Mart closed :(

The rest of America finds Target too expensive and also kind of overrated.

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