Whoosh
July 3rd, 2012
New York's Roosevelt Island is home to a large-scale Swedish-built pneumatic garbage disposal system. The company that maintains the Roosevelt Island system is also responsible for running a similar system at Disney World:
[Repairman Frederik Olsson], a tall blond man in work boots and loose overalls, coughed politely. "Magic Kingdom can be problematic," he said. "I visit it often. It usually breaks because so many sticky things run through it. This one usually breaks down because New Yorkers throw too many big things away."
"The machine doesn't break down that much," Marli said. "But, you know, you get a rainy weekend and people clean out their closets. They throw away the weirdest stuff. Stereos, old computers, steel pipes." The unwieldy objects sometimes clog the works. One time, a piece of rebar backed up the machine for several hours. Another time, it was a skillet. Envac workers have also recovered geometry textbooks, tape players, window frames, lumber, and old clothes. On a third-floor window ledge, there is an array of houseplants in industrial buckets, rescued from the trash.
Let's face it, if your apartment building contained a central garbage disposal chute that emptied periodically by sucking the waste away at 60mph, would you be particularly choosy about what you were dropping down the chute? Or would you be calling 'Bombs away!' as you tried to time the drop to coincide with the trapdoor opening?
[Via MetaFilter]