[WATCH] Roosevelt Island’s Pneumatic Trash System Explained

Discover the unexpected history behind Roosevelt Island’s advanced pneumatic trash system, a marvel of urban engineering that eliminates the need for garbage trucks on the island. Once a dumping ground for New York City's prisons and hospitals, including the infamous asylum where investigative journalist Nellie Bly famously went undercover, Roosevelt Island faced a severe garbage crisis in the late 1960s. This prompted a visionary plan for a car-free residential community with an innovative solution: an underground network of 20-inch steel tubes that vacuum residential waste at speeds up to 70 miles per hour to a central collection facility. This system, inspired by Scandinavian technology, has been operational since the early 1970s and remains one of only two such large-scale applications in the United States, efficiently managing thousands of tons of waste daily without a single garbage bag ever touching the island's sidewalks.