Berlin's Approach to Recycling: Why Not in NYC?
When you’re walking around Berlin, you can’t help but notice the clusters of large recycling bins that dot the city. It got us wondering why New York doesn’t do something similar. It would certainly be simpler and, we’d think, more effective than the current confusing curb-side system. Anyone know the reason?
When you’re walking around Berlin, you can’t help but notice the clusters of large recycling bins that dot the city. It got us wondering why New York doesn’t do something similar. It would certainly be simpler and, we’d think, more effective than the current confusing curb-side system. Anyone know the reason?
We do that in the UK too.
Touche 11:03.
@ anon 11:22; I forgot about those grocery store recycling conveyor belts…they rule! If you hand in a whole crate of beer bottles they give you like 7 euros back. Those bottle refunds save many a Dutch student from imminent starvation, or worse –sobriety.
10:49AM
Maybe you should spend more time looking into local affairs and less time on a Brooklyn real estate board …
It would never work in NY. Once they start finding body parts in them…
There is a similar system in Amesterdam, where you are made more responsible for taking your your own trash out. In most neighborhoods the trash and recycling receptacles are big metal squares housed underground and there is a normal-looking trashcan that comes out of the ground that you shove all your paper and bottles into. A truck comes by every week or so and lifts the whole thing up and empties it. It’s a great system–aesthetically non-invasive, doesn’t smell or promote vermin. In some parts of the city there is still curbside trash collection like we have in NY, but you only have a 2 hour window of opportunity in which to take out your trash 2 or 3 nights a week. A sanitation crew comes by during that time, takes away the trash and uses a high-pressure spraying machine to disinfect the street. If you leave your trash out at any other time a truck picks it up and “garbage investigators” look through it and if there is anything linking your address or name to the garbage they fine you. And if you live in a curbside collection area you still have to schlep your recycling to the nearest bin which can be blocks away.
well, if kids write on those, they might be less inclined to write on concrete, community service for grafitti writers could be the cleaning and maintenance of them…also another job for lower income people earning welfare…however there is no room on any streets for these, at least in residential areas… they could have one on every block of the Arena, tho
amsterdam has these cool underground bins with holes in teh top to drop recycling into. then a machine lifts it up and drains it.
also, bottles get returned in grocery stores on a conveyor belt machine. glass isn’t broken in those machines, they’re washed and reused by the brewerise.
saw the same thing in spain this week – but in areas where they do not have trash pick-up….
reason we will never have them in NYC? 1) someone won’t like the color 2) someone wont like the shape 3) someone will think its a racist/sexist thing 4) someone will not like the fact that they can’t get their stroller past them 5) someone will think their design isn’t “contextual” 6) someone will think its a symbol of gentrification etc etc
In other words the same reason why progress in this city takes too damn long. For example(s), 1) endless whining about economic development (gasp) of brooklyn and 2) we’d all rather watch Al Gore movies than do something tangible like adopt some form of congestion/traffic regulation