The Anonymous Widower

Going Back With Recycling

Most councils use large trucks to collect rubbish and do the recycling.  But I was surprised to see this truck outside my house this morning.

Going Back With Recycling

Going Back With Recycling

Today, is recycling day and I suspect it was doing a bit of specialist work, before the main collection later in the morning.

Years ago, there used to be a lot more smaller refuse collection vehicles, made by companies like Shelvoke and Drewry.  Wood Green used an innovative solution to the collection of rubbish around the High Road, where moving the trucks into the back of the shops was very difficult. They used to use a single Shire horse and a series of trailers for the rubbish.  When they retired the horses, they started using Scammel Mechanical Horses. This extract from Wikipedia, explains the logic behind these innovative vehicles.

The London and North Eastern Railway had approached Napier’s, the quality car and aero-engine makers for an answer to the problem of replacing horses for local haulage purposes, while retaining the flexibility of changing the wagons and the manoeuvrability of the horse and wagon.

You do wonder if this concept is one that will be reinvented and put forward as a wonderful new idea. Imagine say on a large leisure site like the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, where for a large event, you might get tens of thousands of visitors. You could have a series of trailers, that had sections for the various types of rubbish and small electric tugs could move them to and from a central collection point, where they were automatically emptied. Hopefully modern technology could be used to make the trailers able to withstand a small bomb and thus get round one of the problems with traditional litter bins.

August 22, 2013 - Posted by | World | , ,

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