The Future of Trash [pdf] (2023) | Hacker News Reader

The Future of Trash [pdf] (2023)

dsny.cityofnewyork.us

35 pointsjonbaer15 comments

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(2023)

Alternate link: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dsny/resources/reports/the-future-o...

Is this part of the McKinsey work in question after the recent bin unveiling?

New York's viral new trash cans unveiled nearly 2 years after a $1.6 million contract with consultancy giant McKinsey

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-hired-mckinsey-to-a...

This is great! I wish all decisions were made with this kind of detailed analysis beforehand. It really highlights how crazy Manhattan is.

Nice to see that they're dedicating some street space to shared containers, something like this would be destined to fail without it

They are simply going to have to give up some street parking to waste containers. I don't live there, but it seems a fair trade that a few individuals will have to find another place to park so that everyone on the block can enjoy not having unsightly, smelly piles of trash on the sidewalks, and the reduction in vermin that should come with it.

I remember my first visit to NYC and I was shocked that in the premier city of the USA that trash was simply piled on the sidewalks for collection.

> but it seems a fair trade that a few individuals will have to find another place to park

There likely isn't any room. A friend who moved from CA to Manhattan told me parking was so bad by his east village building that he would ignore alternate side parking and eat the fine. Turns out parking tickets are cheap and infrequent enough that they are an affordable way to park your car long term albeit illegally. Of course the city doesn't mind the revenue so everyone gets what they want. He wound up selling his car not long after.

The parking situation is bad all over the city so it is a highly contentious subject.

Would a mini car like a Fiat or Mini cooper work better? Or is it just a no go for cars unless you are rich?

smaller cars are easier to find spots for, but it's just not worth having a car at all in my experience — just forget about parking in winter if it snows

Not really since alternate side parking forces you to move the car for street cleaning. That starts a big process where everyone plays a musical chairs game trying to move their car and park it again. All I can say is thank god I live in Queens where we dont have that alternate side BS.

yes absolutely, but this kind of thing has been verboten for decades — people love complaining about parking spaces, and at times will physically fight to defend them

I think AI could help here to sort out and preprocess reusable and compostable material.

this cost them 4 million.

The DSNY budget is $1.9B. How much should you invest to make the right decision, when you are radically changing the operations of the organization and the daily fabric of city life for millions of people?

what should it have cost? this is a very complicated problem for densest and most populated city in the US... and it seems like a thorough and thoughtful analysis

I agree, practically this would've been much more in terms of combined efforts (to collect, parse, and validate) this analysis. Absolutely bargain if McKinsey was able to create from scratch ;)

Are you saying that's too high? aren't the stakes massive on something like this?

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