Sucking up trash

An estate in northern London uses a system that vacuums away garbage

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Traditional rubbish collection is dirty, smelly, labor-intensive, and rubbish can pile up in basement though way to bins.This new system does away with all that and with lots of expensive big lorries.

"Nobody sees anything happening, there's no bins, there's no truck on streets, there's no curve or boxes, and no kids on the bikes trying to fight with dust cars going up down the street.It's safe,it's clean, and it's healthy for everybody."

This is how it works: you sort your rubbish into special containers in your kitchen, then take the bags to one of these. They drop down into the building's basement. Twice a day, a powerful vaccum sucks them away to a collection centre down a single pipe. First, the food waste, then general rubbish, then stuff for recycling,like paper and cans.

In the past thirty years, the system's been installed around the world, from Stockholm to Barcelona, Disneyland to Dubai, but never in the UK. One problem is it's expensive. Local councils might be savings on refuel collection, but they don't pay the cost of installation. The developer here next to be one stadium, says it make sense partly because this development is the size of a small town.

"We own the entire site, the 85 acres and all the roads. That's the fundamental that we control a public run. And we gonna to take a benefit of that 'cause our public run's gonna be great, as a consequence of this system."

"And this is where the things are, the central collection centre. That big green pipe is the outlet from the underground network and laid in all the roads around here. These great big things are essentially enormous intensive vaccum cleaner that will squirl the rubbish around, yeah, goes off to the top. The waste goes down to the bottom where its compactage suqash together and then it shift to one of these containers where it could be put on to a lorry and taken away."

Environmentally, it's claimed the systems of great improvement, the challenge is to make it work economically. And with the property marketing slump thanks to the credit crunch, it may be some time before other developments follow this one's lead.

Nick Iyn, BBC News.

文本参考中文翻译

传统的垃圾收集工作非常肮脏，难闻，耗费劳动力，可能在放到垃圾箱里之前垃圾已经在地下室堆积如山。这种新的系统将所有的问题一扫而光，也不再需要昂贵的大卡车出手。

“谁都看不到任何东西，没有箱柜，街道上也没有卡车，没有盒子，骑自行车的孩子也不用和灰尘满天飞的汽车争来抢去。它很安全，很干净，对大家非常健康。”

这就是它的工作过程，你把垃圾分类，放在厨房的特制容器里，然后将这些袋子拿到这个设备旁边。他们会落到地下室里。每天两次，这个有力的吸空器通过一根管子把你的垃圾吸到专门的垃圾处理中心。首先是剩菜剩饭，然后是综合垃圾，然后是可回收垃圾，比如纸张或饮料罐。

在过去的30年，世界各地都安装了这种系统，从斯德哥尔摩到巴塞罗纳，从迪斯尼乐园到迪拜，但是英国从来没有安装过。其中一个问题是，该系统价格昂贵。当地政府可能会提供燃料补给，但是不肯支付安装这种系统的费用。这里的下一个客户是一个体育场，他们打算安装这种设备是因为这里的规模简直相当于一个小型城镇。

“这整个场地都是我们的，85英亩，还有所有的道路，我们来经营这个体育场，对公众开放。我们必须保证‘由于安装了这套设备，我们的公众服务更好。’”

“这就是中央处理中心。那根绿色的大管子是地下网络通向地面的出口，所有的路面都有这样的管子。这些绿色的管子本质上来说就是一个巨大的集中的吸尘器，他们把所有地方的垃圾都从地面上吸过来。垃圾到达地面以下，经过打包，然后转移到这些容器里，之后会撞到卡车上运走。”

这种设备将环境改善很多，但是，目前面临的挑战是，怎样将成本降低。由于信贷危机导致房地产市场崩溃，这种新设备的普及看来还需要一段时间。