Roll away those wheelies ...bins to go underground
WHEELIE bins could soon be a thing of the past after a new giant underground rubbish collecting system was launched.
Steel bin chutes set into the pavement now feed into large underground chambers.
A sensor tells the council when they are full and a specially-designed lorry hoists the container out of the ground with a crane and empties the waste into the vehicle.
The method has been introduced at Cambridge University’s new district, Eddington, and eliminates the need for 9,000 wheelie bins.
Council workers have begun collecting rubbish from the system, which is the biggest of its kind in the UK.
The underground banks are five cubic metres and there are different chutes for household waste, mixed materials for recycling, and paper. The 15-hectare Eddington development will take 10 years to complete and will provide 3,000 homes for both the university and the private sector.
It will eventually benefit from 450 recycling and general waste bins in the form of underground banks located in 155 places.
The main benefits of the scheme for people living in Eddington are that they will not have to look at unsightly wheelie bins.
Also they will not need to remember when to put the bin out and then find somewhere to store them. People already in the area have been educated about what can be recycled through leaflets in packs for new arrivals, and labels on kitchen bins and on the steel bin chutes
The new system comes with warning signs on the bin lids telling people not to climb into them as they could end up trapped in the huge underground chamber.
Underground waste and recycling systems have been common on the Continent since the early 1990s.
They are now gradually being introduced in the UK in new developments where there is limited space.