Vacuum tubes could be key to tidier city

Underground rubbish removal could be part of the new-look Swanston Street under a proposal for garbage to be sucked away via buried chutes.

Swedish vacuum waste company Envac has signed on to conduct a report on installing the automated system in Melbourne.

Envac systems remove waste through a series of pipes that suck rubbish into a trash compactor. In a report on the system, Cr Peter Clarke said the vacuum waste pipes could form part of the city's infrastructure, like water pipes or electricity. The pipe networks allow for organic waste, rubbish and recyclable goods to be kept separate and are already in use in parts of Europe. "We've gone from garbos picking up rubbish with plastic bags to big bins, the thing of the '80s, but we haven't moved on from that," Cr Clarke said. "This is the next generation."

If the installation is viable, Melbourne Council would look at using the tubes in the CBD, Docklands, Southbank and the Queen Victoria Market. Cr Clarke recently visited Wembley Stadium in London, where the system has been successfully installed. "They'd installed it at the stadium, and it was going into all the housing developments going up around that."

He said underground rubbish removal avoided having to store rubbish on the street and behind stores, where it attracted vermin. "Swanston Street would be the obvious place to start, as we redo it, and then you grow it from there. Docklands would be easy to bring it in early on, Southbank also."