Amsterdam deploys cargo bikes to collect trash in city center

Amsterdam is experimenting with cargo bikes collecting household and business waste from city center locals’ doors. Waste collection in the city center’s old streets is an ongoing puzzle, and the city hopes that door-to-door collection will result in fewer piles of garbage bags on the sidewalks, Parool reports.

The city first experimented with door-to-door waste collection by cargo bike in a small neighborhood around the Passeursgracht two years ago. Now, it launched a larger experiment in the southern half of the Negen Straatjes.

About a quarter of the 1,150 residents and entrepreneurs in the test area bring their waste to a waste boat in the Singel, where the cargo bike collects it. The other locals use an app to indicate when a waste collector can come by, and the collectors use that to put together an efficient route.

According to the city, three waste bicycles cost as many man-hours as one large refuse truck. And garbage trucks are anyway not an option for the crowded city center, with its old quays and bridges not designed for the load. The city center also doesn’t have space for the underground waste containers that play a key role in waste collection in the rest of Amsterdam.

Amsterdam hopes that this combination of taking your waste to boats moored in the canals or getting it collected by cargo bike will be an efficient solution for about 45,000 households. The combination of industrial waste and household waste means there is enough to collect in the relatively small area. And the fact that the municipality now controls all waste makes the collection more efficient.

Another advantage is that the new method makes enforcement easier. “If the rule is very clear - no more trash bags on the street - residents can also address each other,” Marcel Stiphout, the city’s program manager for waste streams, told the newspaper. In the other half of the Negen Straatjes, where waste collection still happens in the traditional way of people putting bags on the street on certain days, things seem to be getting out of hand, he said.

The first results are promising. The cargo bikes arrive on time in 95 percent of the cases, and 73 percent of locals are optimistic about the experience. The number of reports of rubbish on the street has also decreased.