Envac: Futuristic Recycling in the UK

Residents of the Wembley City housing complex in the UK have a  crazy new recycling system to assist them with the hassle of returning reusable materials. The Swedish designed Envac system whisks away recyclables through a series of tubes to a central collection area. Envac makes recycling a quick (and fun) daily task, rather than having to save up a pile of dirty containers for once a week pick up.

Londonist reports:

Goodbye amassing split carrier bags full of almost empty wine bottles and rusty baked bean tins and escorting them to the alcoholic stink of the recycling box on designated day (should you remember it) and so long the weekly grapple with inadequate black bin bags and squeezing the household rubbish into a regulation wheelie bin hoping the dustmen will actually empty it this week. Hello separating waste into colour-coded containers before popping them into neat and friendly corresponding chutes in the communal area and waving ta ta to it as it gets sucked through a series of pipes at a nimble 40 odd mph to a central collection point, where it will be picked up twice a day. This is the future, you know. In fact, this is apparently a brand new urban quarter in the making, angling to corner the market in compact high end living – no room for the recycling mountain or whiffs of decomposition – in easy reach of the motorway.

The fact that this system seems utterly fantastic, environmentally impressive and not a little space age to us shows just how far behind we are in the UK with our environmental thinking. The Envac system which reduces mess, encourages recycling and cuts CO2 emissions from dump trucks, originated in Sweden in the 1960s and is in use in 30 other countries worldwide.

Londonist: “Wembley Waste Goes Zoom!”