FAST TRASH
Kairn Brannon (Harvard), Ouennassa Khiari (Fratelli), Amanda Zhang (Harvard)
The current truck-based waste collection system of Paris is ill-fitted to serve the city’s high-density population. We propose to install an automated vacuum assisted collection (AVAC) system to efficiently pre-sort and shuttle waste from inside the city to processing centers outside city limits. Similar projects implemented in almost a thousand locations worldwide have attested to AVAC’s potential to improve the citizens’ quality of life, increase environmental sustainability, and decrease economic costs.
To enhance feasibility, we propose retrofitting existing infrastructure by laying pipes in the city sewers and the River Seine. In addition, by installing pipes above ground as public art, we seek to increase the visibility of trash in a city where residents seem to feel that hiding and ignoring trash is the solution to managing its unpleasantries.
Just as bacteria and the human body work together to process food for nourishment in our digestive system, we imagine that Parisians and the city will connect through this fundamental process and reconsider trash to be a beginning rather than an end.
