[echlebek]

The reality is that most other major cities have garbage collection figured out in a better way. For instance in my city, garbage is kept in a dedicated garage area in each apartment building, and on a scheduled day, it's picked up either right in the building or in the alley after the caretaker moves the dumpsters there. The fact that this is considered politically untenable in New York is frankly insane, glad I don't live there.

[StanislavPetrov]

>For instance in my city, garbage is kept in a dedicated garage area in each apartment building

Most apartment buildings in NYC don't have garages.

[ars]

> in a dedicated garage area in each apartment building

NY has a lot of row houses, there's no room for a dedicated garbage area. And the alleys are not wide enough for a garbage truck.

Before criticizing a place, at least understand it first.

[chimeracoder]

> NY has a lot of row houses, there's no room for a dedicated garbage area

Most buildings in NYC already have a dedicated garbage area. The issue is that there isn't a dedicated spot for pickup.

That's a solvable problem: put containerized trash receptacles on the street, so the superintendent can put them in the containers, instead of dropping them directly on the sidewalk (which is what they currently do).

[brnt]

People in row houses can't walk to the corner of the street? That's how it works in much of the Netherlands, underground bins spread over suburbia, which is like 90% row house. Works fine. I wish we had it here (still need to put my bin/bags out on the designated day).

[specialp]

The Netherlands has absolutely nowhere approaching the density of NYC. Even Queens has a density twice that of Amsterdam, and Manhattan 7x. If you see NYC on garbage days the streets are lined with mountains of bags. Each corner would have to have a virtual mine shaft to hold 1000s of bags of garbage.

Also contrary to movies, Manhattan has almost no alley ways either. There's no space for anything. Even when it snows in many areas they have to take the snow and dump it in the East River.

[chimeracoder]

> If you see NYC on garbage days the streets are lined with mountains of bags. Each corner would have to have a virtual mine shaft to hold 1000s of bags of garbage.

Or, you know, a commercial-sized dumpster.

The trash is already taking up space on the sidewalk. Putting a dumpster to contain it would save space, by keeping it contained.

[ClumsyPilot]

> The trash is already taking up space on the sidewalk. Putting a dumpster to contain it would save space, by keeping it contained

It is always fun to see people resort to completely illogical arguments to defend the current habits and rat-feeding status quo.

[brnt]

> The Netherlands has absolutely nowhere approaching the density of NYC.

We were talking about the row houses, right?

[simmonmt]

By row house do you mean something like this? https://goo.gl/maps/XTDwyAZy6GoqPRXt7

That's 4-5 stories of ~4 apartments per floor, times however many of those buildings fit in the 900ft/247m length of a block. There's nowhere near enough space on the corner (here's the corner: https://goo.gl/maps/aszPHqrQVGftcqTCA) to collect that much garbage, much less to do it three times a week.

Yes they could build big underground containers. Yes they could reduce the amount of garbage generated. But both are massive projects far beyond "why can't they just".

[brnt]

> Yes they could build big underground containers.

Obviously. (What else?) Why would that be a massive project?

[dredmorbius]

NYC's underground infrastructure, which is poorly mapped.

See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34253193>

[jeffbee]

This is also how they do it in Zürich. You walk your garbage down to the corner. Recycling is the same way. The only thing that gets picked up from houses is paper and cardboard.

In NYC, in very dense areas like of Manhattan, I would expect it would make sense to put a container in the bottom of every building, but in rowhouse areas it is reasonable to expect the occupants to walk down to the corner.

The main thing is like so many other aspects of American life we have no domestic examples of best practices. You have to visit foreign cities and pay attention, or invite their experts to come teach your city.

[j33zusjuice]

And neither of those things happen in the USA. We kicked England out like 250 years ago, and our general belief is that Europe hasn’t had a good idea since they chose to colonize the Americas. Reasonable people think this is stupid, but we have a lot of unreasonable people here.

[rootusrootus]

If I'm to believe what I read online, especially here on HN, Europe has everything figured out and is so much better than the US. So yes, we do have a lot of unreasonable people here (on HN).

[lillecarl]

Infrastructure wise, central Europe + Scandinavia has things "figured out", which is what the topic is about.

Transport infrastructure in dense areas is "solved" by reducing individual means of transport and increasing shared means of transport. This doesn't align with hyper-individualistic people seeing car transport as their right.

A "fat government" helps building out shared infrastructure, America doesn't have that.

Some people like sharing and cooperating, some people like living under the false impression that they're independent of society.

In certain states there are still laws around water rights that cause unnecessary shortages that could be solved by cooperation, but the laws are there and the big consumers upstream lobby to keep them that way.

Not saying the US isn't great, you've been the economic powerhouse of the world for awhile now, you have accomplished many great things (research topping my list). I just think somewhere you forgot to invest back into shared infrastructure, and that "ours" is better (with exceptions both ways).

There's a bit of my reasoning, which if you wildly disagree with makes us both unreasonable to eachother, whoever is right is up to the future to decide independent of us two.

[grumple]

As someone from a dense city with generally smaller roads than NYC (Philly), I think that's untrue. If NYC wanted to do it, it could be done. In Philly, trucks make it down alleys where the roadway is half the size of the truck. Or they wheel the dumpsters down the alley to the corner. That doesn't mean every alley is suitable, but you can put the dumpster on the main road where you put the trash, or do as our European friends suggest.

[novok]

There are barely if any alleys in most of NYC.