Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by LargoLasskhyfv 2089 days ago
I doubt it too, but not for the reasons you mention. It works only with disciplined and responsible people. We had a few of them since the 80ies, none of them are in operation anymore to my knowledge. Because the people abused them, which led to many service interruptions, expensive repairs, and so on. Maybe in some future upper class condominiums like in Elysium, with properly trained and well behaved Eloys, but not here on Earth :)

edit: partial translation of https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abfallsauganlage by courtesy of DeepL:

Waste suction plant in Bonn-Tannenbusch

This plant has been shut down since 1 January 2010. Since the beginning of the 1970s, it has served up to 12,000 inhabitants of the Bonn-(Neu-)Tannenbusch district for waste disposal. It was the largest waste suction plant in the world. It comprised a suction pipe network of about 12 kilometers in length and 200 insertion shafts (100 permanently installed in the multi-story apartment buildings and high-rise buildings, 100 outdoors) [12].

In 1991, the German Packaging Ordinance came into force. After the introduction of the yellow garbage cans and the yellow garbage bags for packaging waste, the Tannenbuscher plant was only meant to collect the so-called residual waste.

During the approx. 40 years of its operation, approx. 50.000 tons of household waste were disposed of with this waste suction plant. With a transport speed of approx. 90 km/h garbage bags or loose waste was transported to a collection point in the industrial park "Hohe Straße". From there, the transport route continued by container and truck to the waste incineration plant in Bonn-Endenich.

Misuse and damage have made this form of waste disposal increasingly expensive and not very environmentally friendly. Even hazardous waste and slaughterhouse waste from private households reached the plant and had to be salvaged at great expense. In addition, heavy objects that were also thrown in by mistake damaged the underground pipelines and tore holes in their walls.

In most cases, these damages could not be detected and repaired in time, so that large amounts of soil were sucked in at various points by the operation of the suction blower. The resulting cavities under the earth's surface sometimes caused damage to overlying roadways and other surfaces. The danger of a break-in, which could cause damage to buildings or even people, caused the responsible authorities to stop the operation of the Tannenbuscher waste suction plant.

In March 2007, the city council of the Federal City of Bonn decided to shut down the waste suction plant from autumn 2009. Several filling shafts were closed ahead of schedule, the last of them at the turn of the year 2009/2010. A dismantling of the plant is planned. [13] The dismantling of the plant cost about 1.5 million Euros, [14] for the entire dismantling of the plant, i.e. the filling of the pipelines and the demolition of the 150 filling stations, the head of the environment department had given an estimate of 4 million Euros in advance. [15]