Also a bit wild to me that there's not like a communal dumpster.
Some population dense cities also do underground dumpsters, has that been floated?
For general household trash, if you are eligible for DSNY collection, it's two times per week except for some holidays. Recycling and compost are once a week. If you contract to a private garbage collection company, it's whatever you specify in the contract.
> Also a bit wild to me that there's not like a communal dumpster.
Large apartment buildings of course do have trash chutes leading to a dumpster of some sort. But inside or outside smaller buildings, there is no space.
> Some population dense cities also do underground dumpsters, has that been floated?
There is an underground garbage handling system on Roosevelt Island. The idea of underground dumpsters in other parts of the city been floated, but it's impossible because there is too much density of existing underground infrastructure and much of this infrastructure is not mapped, making it impossible to plan an excavation project of such a scale. See e.g. https://dsny.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/reports/fut... (pdf). (There are also interesting engineering questions of how underground dumpsters would work after heavy snowfall.)
It looks like underground would be an option, but the big deal breaker is potentially needing more frequent pickup and specialized trucks.
Put them on a boat? Or are the legal hurdles to importing so high?
The bags therein get put out on the street in a big pile, however. Or they did before the new bin situation.
That they're able to collect that much garbage anyway means it's not an unsolvable problem, but going from using that much space once a week, in the form of piles of garbage on garbage day [with the remainder of the time it being scattered in smaller piles in buildings' garbage rooms], to 24/7, means you're losing like 12 parking spots per block, or like half a building lot per block, if you're storing them off the street.
That’s the thing about changing how things work, you can change multiple things at the same time.
By your calculation, they would get 12 parking spots worth of random small pockets of space back per block. In reality, it would be more than that in usable space, because who want to do anything directly next to a distributed pile of garbage?
People would rather walk through a maze of garbage bags than make things slightly less convenient while driving. We are way too car-brained.
