I was only being facetious about the paper shredder toilet attachment, but the more I think of it...

Imagine if you visited a country where people saved their poop & pee in zip-lock baggies, thrown in a bucket and stored up all week until the "poop man" came to collect it. And if you forgot to put your human waste biohazard out by the road you would end up with a 2-week payload.

That seems pretty gross and backward to us, right? But if we had never known anything different? We would just accept it as normal.

Why should we not think the same way of our trash disposal system? We only consider the "trash man" normal because we've never known anything different.

But surely we can do better than polluting the atmosphere with huge diesel trucks driving house to house to collect garbage. I'm talking a level or two above an in-home garbage transport system. I'm talking about a community infrastructure. A large-scale automatic system for removing waste from homes without any trucks, fuel, or arduous labor. A system like the sewer system that transports away all manner of trash, not just human excrement, dead goldfish, and bathwater.

Sounds pretty daunting, right? I can already hear it: "implementing something like that would not be feasible, bla bla bla." To which I say (and I'm no longer merely being facetious) "It wasn't that big of a deal when we did it for turds. Why can't we do it again? In fact, why can't we just use the existing turd tubes?"

Why can't we put overgrown paper shredder toilet attachments in our bathrooms and flush milk jugs? If we made some (admittedly probably pretty radical) changes to our water treatment plants, why couldn't they serve double duty?

This would meet the goals which inspired this thread as well as remedy an even larger problem that we weren't even cognizant of.

EDIT/ADD: also we would probably fill landfills much more slowly if all our trash were ground to confetti before it got there.

 

They actually make such a thing but it goes under the toilet. Common marine item.

What is a Macerator Pump? As mentioned above, the macerator pump is a piece of kit that will turn larger chunks of waste into smaller pieces or a slurry of waste. This slurry can then easily pass through your hose into the sewage system.

 

I was only being facetious about the paper shredder toilet attachment, but the more I think of it...

Imagine if you visited a country where people saved their poop & pee in zip-lock baggies, thrown in a bucket and stored up all week until the "poop man" came to collect it. And if you forgot to put your human waste biohazard out by the road you would end up with a 2-week payload.

That seems pretty gross and backward to us, right? But if we had never known anything different? We would just accept it as normal.

Why should we not think the same way of our trash disposal system? We only consider the "trash man" normal because we've never known anything different.

But surely we can do better than polluting the atmosphere with huge diesel trucks driving house to house to collect garbage. I'm talking a level or two above an in-home garbage transport system. I'm talking about a community infrastructure. A large-scale automatic system for removing waste from homes without any trucks, fuel, or arduous labor. A system like the sewer system that transports away all manner of trash, not just human excrement, dead goldfish, and bathwater.

Sounds pretty daunting, right? I can already hear it: "implementing something like that would not be feasible, bla bla bla." To which I say (and I'm no longer merely being facetious) "It wasn't that big of a deal when we did it for turds. Why can't we do it again? In fact, why can't we just use the existing turd tubes?"

Why can't we put overgrown paper shredder toilet attachments in our bathrooms and flush milk jugs? If we made some (admittedly probably pretty radical) changes to our water treatment plants, why couldn't they serve double duty?

This would meet the goals which inspired this thread as well as remedy an even larger problem that we weren't even cognizant of.

The material from your example shredded milk jug is quite insoluble in any reasonable liquid. So it would not travel very well through our present drain system. And I have lived in an area where trash collection was not the primary disposal means. Folks would take their trash and dump it along the backroads, away from where folks lived, but not far away from them. That was often rather nasty. Garbage, trash, and recycling trucks have become far cleaner than what you claim.
As a matter of fact, I have designed and quoted a machine to shred, and melt-extrude plastic bearing municipal waste at a rate of about 20 tones per hour. The resulting product would have been rubber jacketed landscaping timbers, about the size of railroad ties. Unfortunately the energy needed made the whole thing a non-starter project. It became apparent that the claimed process that I had scaled up was a fraud, and the process did not really produce the materials that were what the samples were claimed to be.
And consider that in some cities i India and Pakistan sewers and toilets are rare and so folks just dump wherever they can, and the stink is rather extreme in the summer heat.
And here in the "Civilized Suburbs", only 70 years ago, many houses had incinerators or wire-frame trash burners, because the common way to dispose of trash was to burn it oneself. Theincinerators were used at night so that the source of the nasty smoke could not be easily seen.

 

They actually make such a thing but it goes under the toilet. Common marine item.
View attachment 215794
What is a Macerator Pump? As mentioned above, the macerator pump is a piece of kit that will turn larger chunks of waste into smaller pieces or a slurry of waste. This slurry can then easily pass through your hose into the sewage system.

So it's like an in-sink garbage disposal but for the commode... very interesting. I did not not know these existed. I think I need one. Not so that I can flush milk jugs or anything, but... well, you probably wouldn't appreciate me continuing.

 

I figure like anything else would it be feasible in new construction? What would it add to the end cost of a new construction home? The vacuum connection in every room eventually died and I don't think it ever had a chance. Would I want the added cost for such a convenience? My answer would be no. So how much would a realistic cost be on let's say a 4 bedroom home in the hardware? Then there is maintenance and upkeep cost.

The feasibility of developing a “central garbage” feature in a home...

I have to say none.

Ron

Yeah, new-construction-only was the thrust... and only for high square-footage homes, at least initially.

 

The material from your example shredded milk jug is quite insoluble in any reasonable liquid. So it would not travel very well through our present drain system. And I have lived in an area where trash collection was not the primary disposal means. Folks would take their trash and dump it along the backroads, away from where folks lived, but not far away from them. That was often rather nasty. Garbage, trash, and recycling trucks have become far cleaner than what you claim.
As a matter of fact, I have designed and quoted a machine to shred, and melt-extrude plastic bearing municipal waste at a rate of about 20 tones per hour. The resulting product would have been rubber jacketed landscaping timbers, about the size of railroad ties. Unfortunately the energy needed made the whole thing a non-starter project. It became apparent that the claimed process that I had scaled up was a fraud, and the process did not really produce the materials that were what the samples were claimed to be.
And consider that in some cities i India and Pakistan sewers and toilets are rare and so folks just dump wherever they can, and the stink is rather extreme in the summer heat.
And here in the "Civilized Suburbs", only 70 years ago, many houses had incinerators or wire-frame trash burners, because the common way to dispose of trash was to burn it oneself. Theincinerators were used at night so that the source of the nasty smoke could not be easily seen.

So that's one vote for "no," based on the insolubility of milk jugs and other adjacent information.

For the record I was not suggesting that any of this trash would dissolve before reaching the treatment plant. But rather that it could be collected there instead of out by the curb.

 

If we consider that perhaps the pipes would be like 4 inch plastic conduit, but with a non-stick inside finish that did not cost much, it may run $2 per foot. That is the inexpensive part of the system There would also need to be some sort of feed-end hardware to funnel the trash in, and since it can not be a gravity flow system it wil need some way to avoid inhaling small pets and user hands. On the delivery end it will need at least a collection tank of some material and some volume of capacity to collect the materials. In addition there will need to be a vacuum blower to create the air flow to move the trash through the pip.At current pricing that pump will cost about $2500, plus controls. So the materials cost at today's pricing will probably be at least $7500. Installation will add additional cost.Probably a total installed price of $15K.
Far cheaper would be a robot to empty the trash can whenever it makes it's rounds.

Yeah, true — robots by 2040 will be doing basic chores and every home will have one.

But material science will eventually become Jetsons-esque... decentralizing the recycling process seems inevitable so even the notion of needing to go "room to room" to do this seems obsolete, even by robot.

 

I was only being facetious about the paper shredder toilet attachment, but the more I think of it...

Imagine if you visited a country where people saved their poop & pee in zip-lock baggies, thrown in a bucket and stored up all week until the "poop man" came to collect it. And if you forgot to put your human waste biohazard out by the road you would end up with a 2-week payload.

That seems pretty gross and backward to us, right? But if we had never known anything different? We would just accept it as normal.

Why should we not think the same way of our trash disposal system? We only consider the "trash man" normal because we've never known anything different.

But surely we can do better than polluting the atmosphere with huge diesel trucks driving house to house to collect garbage. I'm talking a level or two above an in-home garbage transport system. I'm talking about a community infrastructure. A large-scale automatic system for removing waste from homes without any trucks, fuel, or arduous labor. A system like the sewer system that transports away all manner of trash, not just human excrement, dead goldfish, and bathwater.

Sounds pretty daunting, right? I can already hear it: "implementing something like that would not be feasible, bla bla bla." To which I say (and I'm no longer merely being facetious) "It wasn't that big of a deal when we did it for turds. Why can't we do it again? In fact, why can't we just use the existing turd tubes?"

Why can't we put overgrown paper shredder toilet attachments in our bathrooms and flush milk jugs? If we made some (admittedly probably pretty radical) changes to our water treatment plants, why couldn't they serve double duty?

This would meet the goals which inspired this thread as well as remedy an even larger problem that we weren't even cognizant of.

EDIT/ADD: also we would probably fill landfills much more slowly if all our trash were ground to confetti before it got there.

Big vote for me... that's what I said above — "decentralization of garbage." My original idea was actually tied to that notion. Garbage should be thought of as a "transported sewage" concept. The problem is, material sciences are not at the level they need to be to handle converting every type of refuse nor is maceration tech able to convert it for transport as was pointed out above. But I think it is certainly an eventuality, because the existing system with trucks, plastic bags, etc. is patently "old tech." Perhaps 30 years from now.

 

robots by 2040 will be doing basic chores and every home will have one.

I've only been around since '85 but it's my understanding people have been saying automaton butlers were 20 years off for the past 60 years or more. And flying cars. Where the heck are the flying cars? Im entitled to one.

 

I've only been around since '85 but it's my understanding people have been saying automaton butlers were 20 years off for the past 60 years or more. And flying cars. Where the heck are the flying cars? Im entitled to one.

In terms of automated butlers, I think no one had the right to truly project anything remotely accurate with that until the mid-90’s when Boston Dynamics-esque robots became real. Now we can at least get a concept of the actual rate of development.

Back to the Future II gave us a notion of flying cars that was 70 years off, not 30.. someone has to engineer a magic molecule that has its own gravity for it to have the filmic lure of that movie. Until then, it’s glorified helicopters: https://moller.com/moller_skycar400.html

 

most are not thinking in terms of recycling in every room as it is

That may be true in the US, but here in Wales we have limited landfill opportunities, a positive attitude to recycling (from all rooms) and a consequent high recycling percentage.

 

That may be true in the US, but here in Wales we have limited landfill opportunities, a positive attitude to recycling (from all rooms) and a consequent high recycling percentage.

It is true here in the US too. The area I live in saw many strip mines in earlier years. So we enede up having garbage trucked in from other states that were more populated. Every time a new state was brought on board to the garbage disposal scheme you would soon find new insects or plants that never were here before, invasive species. No predators for them so they thrive.

 

They actually make such a thing but it goes under the toilet. Common marine item.
View attachment 215794
What is a Macerator Pump? As mentioned above, the macerator pump is a piece of kit that will turn larger chunks of waste into smaller pieces or a slurry of waste. This slurry can then easily pass through your hose into the sewage system.

They aren't only for boats. People wanting to put a bathroom in their basements use them too, although not small like the boat ones. My middle son does remodeling and carpentry and has install a few for people.
https://www.saniflodepot.com/pages/basement-bathroom-macerator-pumps

 

So what we find is that while such a system is quite possible it would be far from cost effective. And the benefits would be very small. In addition, thiose folks who could easily afford such a system probably have enough housekeeping staff that they have no need of it.
So I am wondering as to how wealthy the TS must be, and what part of the world they live in. Unven unskilled labor is expensive where I live.

 

Which brings us to the ecologically preferred solutions: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Reduce: We should be reducing our consumption. Many usage of plastics ought to be banned, such as, single use plastic bags, drinking straws, coffee cup lids, packaging.

Reuse: Many times perfectly working household items, clothing are sent to landfill. Many mechanical and electrical items have a simple defect than is easily repairable and the item put back into service. If there is a blank sheet of paper (either side), reuse the blank side for taking notes, scratch pad, etc. Reuse the liners of cereal boxes for leftover food, or the cardboard from cereal boxes for making storage boxes for electronic components, hardware, etc., shoe boxes for parts storage. I have many Greenlee chassis punches whose original cardboard containers have seen better days. I use cereal boxes to fashion new containers.

Recycle: Plastics should be turned into pellets and recycled into new products, otherwise they end up as micro-plastics in the environment and reenter the food chain.

 

hi,
This makes interesting reading regarding the Earth resource usage...

https://www.se.com/ww/en/about-us/s..._Global_NBTextEN&utm_term=world overshoot day

E

 

Which brings us to the ecologically preferred solutions: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Reduce: We should be reducing our consumption. Many usage of plastics ought to be banned, such as, single use plastic bags, drinking straws, coffee cup lids, packaging.

Reuse: Many times perfectly working household items, clothing are sent to landfill. Many mechanical and electrical items have a simple defect than is easily repairable and the item put back into service. If there is a blank sheet of paper (either side), reuse the blank side for taking notes, scratch pad, etc. Reuse the liners of cereal boxes for leftover food, or the cardboard from cereal boxes for making storage boxes for electronic components, hardware, etc., shoe boxes for parts storage. I have many Greenlee chassis punches whose original cardboard containers have seen better days. I use cereal boxes to fashion new containers.

Recycle: Plastics should be turned into pellets and recycled into new products, otherwise they end up as micro-plastics in the environment and reenter the food chain.

<OFF Topic>
While I agree I only agree to a point as once things leave my tree lawn (curbside) they are beyond my control. Enter the City of Cleveland, Ohio USA. While I live in the suburbs Cleveland is the topic. So the city decided to make sure every residence had a recycle bin and a garbage bin and even defined, in detail, recyclables and garbage. The new bins were real nice and actually included a RFID tag so the RFID number could be associated with each residence. When collections were made they could easily flag garbage in recyclables or vice verse. They could also be aware if a residence failed for a few weeks to put out which bin. Big brother was right on this. Oh yes, and a pizza box with grease on it is not recyclable.

Violators would be fined and the set fine would be something like $100 USD. Now the majority of inner city dwellers in Cleveland are on welfare in public housing so good luck assessing fines on them. Hell, they don't pay traffic tickets so why pay a garbage ticket. Then came a rumor that recycle trucks and garbage trucks were taking all refuse to the same place. Enter FOX * Investigative Reporting. They placed I want to say 5 GPS transmitters in assorted recycle bins at curbside. I think two stopped transmitting and were lost in action. They were assumed KIA during compact. The survivors made it and guess what, they were dumped in the same lot as regular garbage. Then an investigation of the City Hall dumpsters revealed the employees really didn't care which dumpster they tossed waste into. I guess it didn't matter since using different trucks it all ended up in the same pile at the dump.

When confronted the mayor, known to many as "Mumbles" mumbled about how the city contract expired but a consultant firm (more taxpayer expense) would be hired to solve the problem. Amazing in a city of over paid public employees we need a consultant firm? The real root cause of the problem is nobody wants recyclables anymore simply because there is no money in it. That is what it comes down to, it's not worth it.

Recycle? I grew up recycling during the 50s. There was a Milkman (Dellwood Dairy) who left us fresh bottles of milk. When empty my mom rinsed the bottles and placed them outside in the milkbox. The milkman came, took the empties and left full bottles of fresh milk. When the new sewers went in on LINY it was great. The workers would leave behind beer and soda bottles, I got five cents on the quart beer bottles and two cents on the smaller soda bottles at the delicatessen. Apparently back then there was money in it? The problem is today nobody wants the stuff and if you do come get it here in Cleveland. We seem to have a surplus along with a mismanaged city.
</OFF TOPIC>

Ron

 

Central garbage disposal is actually one of the accomplishments of communism.

Every apartment building in the USSR, and now Russia, has a trash chute outside in the hallway, on every floor.

Since the apartments are tiny, especially the kitchens, trash bins have to be small, so they would be taken out daily, if not more often. Even though food in the USSR rarely had any packaging. You might get a fish wrapped in paper, but that's about it.

So taking trash outside would be considered a whole endeavor, since waiting for the elevator is fairly time consuming, and then in most regions it would involve getting dressed, since it's cold outside for a good part of the year. You also might have to walk in knee deep snow for a few hundred feet to get to large metal trash bins.

Also in the USSR there was no such thing as plastic bags. If someone came across a plastic bag, it would be saved, washed, and reused into perpetuity. So trash was always loose in the bins, and it was mostly bio products (see above, almost no packaging).

The trash chute were never cleaned, except to clear obstructions. As you can imagine, they stank to high hell year round. And by American standards of cleanliness, most people should not have even touched the handle to open those chutes.

Did I say accomplishments? I meant horrors.

My original question was tacitly about having the "future" in mind, and wanting to ping the existing climate for how doable something "other than the existing framework" is. It was more about "what are the options" to process trash in a more environmental and efficient, decentralized manner than manual collection from room to room into plastic bags and putting it out into an odorous receptacle for a big diesel truck to stink its way up your street in every respect, then to drive it off to some dump. It just needs Extreme Makeover: Trash Edition in my estimation in every way: environmental and efficiency-wise.

Looks like someone cracked the "Mr. Fusion" waste-to-fuel problem:

https://synovapower.com/our-solution/

Within 20 years, they'll get that down to a small home-system, and then the concept of central garbage makes sense. Every chute goes right to the basement, it converts it to fuel which then supplements or replaces the power/HVAC system’s.

 

Every chute goes right to the basement,

So those living in Florida can't have one?

 

So those living in Florida can't have one?

Basement = catch-all term there ;--) Outdoors, garage, shed, wherever...