The subsoil of historical cities hides a great garbage vacuum. The problem is that you have to punch

Tony Soprano, from the great series’The soprano‘He was dedicated to garbage management. It may seem an exaggeration designed for fiction, but as usually happens, fiction surpasses reality. Base management It is a problem for half the world (more now than China decided to stop being our landfill) and move so much money that there is mafias moving from one country to another. In the search for solutions, the definitive company came up with a Swedish company to stop seeing cubes and garbage trucks through the streets: move waste from pipes.

It is something that has turned medieval cities into the technological pinnacle of garbage collection. But the day -to -day life of the neighbors is something else.

Changing the approach. It all started by chance. At the end of the 1950s, the Sollefte hospital in Sweden was investigating the creation of a central aspiration system to catch dust. One of the participants in the table was OLOF H.Hallstrom, director of Centralsug, the current Waste Waste company, and the idea arose: instead of a giant vacuum For dust, a giant garbage vacuum could be created.

So They tell On its website, where they point out that the system was inaugurated in the hospital in 1961 and that it continues to work with many of the original pieces installed more than 60 years ago. But of course, if it works so well in a building, why not expand the network to an entire city? That is no longer so easy.

A giant vacuum. First of all, you have to see how it works. Known as’Pneumatic garbage collection‘O’ Automatic vacuum collection ‘, AVAC from now on, is a giant vacuum connected to a multitude of underground pneumatic tubes. On the surface there are a series of nozzles that are designed for organic or plastic waste (the glass could damage the system) in which the bag is deposited with the waste and, thanks to fans that generate suctions of more than 60 km/h, travel through the tubes to a collection center.

They are classified and loaded into trucks to transport them to their final location. This system reduces the use of trucks and their corresponding pollution, as well as Cubes in the streets. The most current systems include doors that are automatically open and cards in possession of citizens to activate the system.

Modernizing historical cities. And that reduction of cubes and trucks circulating is something ideal for any city, but it seems key in locations with two profiles: tourist or old helmets of medieval cities. A clear example is Bergen, a Norwegian city founded in 1070 that is the second most populated in the country and has a historic center full of colorful wooden houses. It has fired several times and the garbage itself can be a focus of fire, so by safety and improve the helmet, they decided to bet on an avac type system.

It is one of the 200 cities in the world in which this system has been installed and, as we read in The Washington Postthe diesel emissions Since the garbage trucks stopped circulating along their narrow streets. Among others, Leganés, Barcelona, ​​Barakaldo, Torrent, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Stockholm, Doha or Seoul have neighborhoods in which a pneumatic collection system is used, and in new construction complexes of some cities are also betting on it.

Complex. The problem is what you can imagine: the system itself is expensive, but it is also a headache. In new neighborhoods, it is as simple as to pass one more pipe in the streets where there are already other pipes, but in Historical cities Or neighborhoods already built, bet on something like avac implies lifting the streets and performing a considerable work.

Bergen’s example is clear. As they point out on TWP, since they made the decision to start building the system in the historic center in 2007, they have invested about 100 million dollars. There are years to finish connecting the entire network and estimate that the cost will be 30 million dollars. Terje Strom, responsible for waste management in the city, says it is “almost impossible.” Contextualizing the figures? It is almost the entire annual budget of the Waste Department.

Gamification and penalty. But, leaving cost aside, user experiences seem positive. It is a system that simplifies the garbage, which eliminates full cubes and the truck transit. In Spain we have containersbut in other cities they work with individual cubes that roll through the streets and share the stamp. Not everything is perfect, since although there are no trucks, they do operators who are dedicated to unblocking the mouths when someone introduces something that should not.

And beyond not seeing garbage trucks, there are two incentives for citizens. One is the gamification by application That tells us how many kilos we have deposited in real time and compares with the previous month. It also tells us how average we are, since there is a limit. In Bergen, to open waste mouths, residents bring their electronic key, which allows you to register how much discard and collect a rate according to the amount of non -recycled garbage they send to the incinerator. This penalty is something that It has also been seen in South Koreawith positive results regarding the increase in recycling.

Not everyone is happy. Beyond installation costs, it seems the perfect system to manage waste. However, looking at what happens in Spanish cities in which these systems have been installed, we see that not everything is so beautiful. There are more than thirty cities that use this pneumatic collection, and in some Failures are reported that cause the tubes to be full due to pipes that do not absorb well.

It is something that causes bad odors, as users of Barakaldowhere conventional containers have had to be placed next to the tubes. And in the district of Zarzamada de Leganés, it was A headache For years. In Vitoria-Gasteiz they don’t seem too happy either. It was at the end of 2023 when the City Council commented That, the system launched in the early 2000s in the old town, was not “efficient from the environmental or economic point of view”, and that they would continue to use it because it was already installed, but that would not expand it.

Javier, from Torrent, tells us that he lives in one of these barios with pneumatic collection. He says that, when built from zero in the early 2000s, he opted for this technology and that the theory is great. “You do not have to go to a container, but it is in your landing or by the pool. It also has advantages, such as everything is more at hand and trucks do not circulate through the neighborhood.” The rest is not so positive, as landing that smells bad because the system was not done correctly or having to put the bag “punching” because the mouth is narrow. “In the end, what many people do is go to the traditional container.”

Expansion. In any way, there are Several projects of pneumatic collection all over the world And, although they can make sense in certain facilities or zones, it is evident that it is a system that generates controversy. One of AVAC’s largest projects is being built in MECA, being a clear example of something that makes sense because there is a single objective: that during Ramadan, when every day They are generated More than 2,000 tons of garbage, there are no bags in sight.

Returning to Bergen, the authorities comment on the TWP article that, since they started the system in 2007, they have saved 22 million dollars in garbage collection. It is much less than invested, but also claim that, “in the long term, it will be balanced.” We will see when that “long term” is, since in historical cities like this, they can install the pipes when tasks are performed maintenance of electricity, water or sewerage networksturning that modernization into something much slower.

Images | Xataka, ENDAC, Basotxerri

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