For instance, my local transit agency purchased several hybrid-electric buses that cost $200,000 more each than a regular bus, but only improve fuel usage by 0.6 miles per gallon, saving at most a few thousand dollars per year. The agency of course pulled a full court press on how much fuel was being saved but wouldn't discuss the additional cost of the bus itself that made the purchase a complete waste of money.
The Feds are mostly responsible for the love of hybrids that US agencies have. The extra fed funding that agencies get for hybrid buses make it worth it for them, and the fuel savings is the cherry on top.
Hopefully it will be possible to fix the UI issues.
At the 24 minute mark he talks about a program to collect trash from inaccessible places. They gave people food to bring collected trash to a central spot.
I'm thinking, a million people actually live in the "served area" and maybe one public trash can per thousand people, so figure a thousand cans.
900K divided by 365 is about three K per day.
Combine a thousand cans and emptied three times per day and 3K per day budget and you end up with emptying a can costs a buck.
Lets say each garbage man works 8 hours and never slacks off and only takes 5 minutes average to drive from can to can and empty. Anyway I'm thinking a thousand cans times three times a day means 3000 drivebys times 5 minutes each means 15000 minutes expended per day with the old system driving to visit each can. Now realize that you're not going to save any drive time using the solar cans. But for the sake of amusement we'll try it. Now 15 kilominutes given an 8 hour working day results in thirty or so trash trucks and garbage men under the old (and new...) system.
Not sure if that's reasonable or not. A couple workmans comp cases and the next million empties are going to cost an extra buck, sure. On the other hand, its hard to imagine burning a dollar of diesel between each can. Philly just isn't that big. Then again, if each garbage man was paid $30K per year aka $15/hr and emptied about ten cans per hour, thats $1.50 per empty so factor in lower pay.. But how do you actually save money if you have to drive the same old route anyway?
Interestingly the economics of big city garbage pickup begin to make it look reasonable to simply have the post office mail trash to the landfill. Its not many orders of magnitude apart, and fundamentally junkmail delivery isn't all that far away from garbage pickup. So it should cost about a "postage" amount.