[giantg2]

A better model would really be a low-waste lifestyle and compostable packaging/materials. Greatly reduce the amount of items that are thrown away and provide community compost sites for the packing materials. Pickup interval of regular trash could be reduced to once every 1 to 3 months.

[Animats]

community compost sites

Yeah, right. You want to live next to one? The manager of the barn where I keep my horse has the problem that the non-rural types who have moved in next door don't like the manure pile. And if you think manure has enough value that someone will haul it away for free, you're wrong.

[tonyedgecombe]

Our food waste has been collected for more than a decade now. Once a year we can go and collect free compost from the council. It works in other parts of the world.

[082349872349872]

In my part of the world, we don't have counties: all land is incorporated into one commune/comune/Gemeinde or another.

In practice, this means that the community compost is usually situated well away from residential zones.

[Xylakant]

I totally would not mind living next door to a community compost pile - in fact, there is one round the corner, but it’s mostly used for garden waste from the parks around here. But a well managed compost pile has no negative side effects. It might smell a little like hay from time to time, but it’s definitely not even remotely comparable to a manure pile.

[goodcanadian]

Really? Around here people charge money for horse manure.

Also, a community compost heap need not resemble a manure pile.

[sokoloff]

Composted manure has value and no objectionable smell.

Fresh from the horse hot solids have the opposite of both of those qualities.

It takes time and biological action to turn the second into the first. The manure pile bears little resemblance to what comes out of the bag you buy at the home center or farm store.

Of course, I have zero sympathy for folks who move in next to a horse farm or near an airport and are somehow shocked (more likely feigning shock) to learn that horses and airplanes do horse and airplane things there.

[frosted-flakes]

Or buy a house that backs onto a mainline railway that sees 10+ freight trains a day, then write to the city to complain about the noise.

[sokoloff]

Exactly! If the house near to the rail line, airport, pig farm, or landfill is cheaper, it might be that way for a reason.

[frosted-flakes]

I read about the railway situation in my local paper the other week. They were trying to get them to institute a no-horns rule in the area, which is not likely to succeed.

A passenger railway in a nearby city has the no-horns rule, but that case is different because the line was dead for more than a decade before it was revived, the train has a strict speed limit while in the city, the only at-grade crossings (2 or 3) are well-protected with gates, lights, bells, and pedestrian mazes, and it travels through a dense residential area.

[giantg2]

Yep, and it's even worse if enough people complain and your tax dollars are used to build a sound barrier.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

You can spread a thin layer, maybe one centimeter thick almost fresh from the horse. Though I prefer them dried for maybe up to a few days, because less mess. Worked excellently so far.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

That seems strange to me. Here the horse dung is valued, and the renters/owners of allotment gardens pay for having it delivered to them on flatbed trailers as excellent fertilizer. I sometimes grab an old empty can of paint (because it has a lid) and shovel some into it, to be dispersed onto the plant containers and flower boxes on my balconies.

[barumi]

> A better model would really be a low-waste lifestyle and compostable packaging/materials.

Your suggestion only affects how much trash is generated, not the need to process the trash that's generated.

Unless your idealistic "low-waste lifestyle" is able to generate zero waste, the suggestion is pointless.

[giantg2]

How much trash is generated does substantially impact how we manage that trash. This would reduce the frequency of trash pickup, transport, and storage. If it's reduced sufficiently, then the idea about building and maintaining tube infrastructure would not make sense.

Some people reduce it to this [1]. Probably not achievable for most, but a 75% reduction would be significant [2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/22/zero-was...

[2] https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/trash-americans-p...

[barumi]

> How much trash is generated does substantially impact how we manage that trash.

Volume has an impact on the throughout of the system,not the need to move trash from the producers to the consumers.

This thread is about a proposal for a new system to transport trash. Reducing the amount of trash produced per capita does not eliminate the need to transport trash.

[giantg2]

"Reducing the amount of trash produced per capita does not eliminate the need to transport trash."

But a significant reduction would make the proposed system meaningless from a cost benefit perspective. I already see this system as having no real benefit. Trash is $250/year and sewer is $1250/year, so this new sewer-like proposal will likely be more expensive than it is now.

This is just the systems thinking approach. Who cares about transporting trash if you still have all the other problems, like dumping it in landfills. It's better to think about the entire system and make changes that benefit us on multiple levels. If you aren't willing to talk about the entire problem space, then that tells me something about the quality of the proposal...

[Fjolsvith]

Water soluble waste.

[giantg2]

Depends. Those water soluble packing peanuts are way better than plastic. But probably not great to be adding those corn-based chemicals to the water in high concentrations. Not to mention this might not be useful to water constrained areas, especially with the UN saying water scarcity is expected to dramatically increase in the next decade or two.

[TeMPOraL]

I don't see that working for packaging. Half of the food is filled with or submerged in water, and for the rest, as well as non-food items, the packaging would start decomposing in the ambient air because of the water vapor.

[koheripbal]

You should revisit this comment after you have children.