New York City’s Trash-Sucking Island

NEW YORK CITY — The system of pneumatic trash-sucking tubes running beneath the surface of New York City’s Roosevelt Island is either a quirky relic or a glimpse of the future, depending on how you look at it.

A network of 20-inch tubes takes garbage from the island’s 16 residential towers, collecting from every floor, to a central collection point where it is compacted and trucked off the island. It is at once a simple and elegant solution to gathering trash, and an aging and complicated beast that needs a lot of upkeep.

“I can’t run the system right now, I got guys in the pipe. It would kill them,” said sanitation engineer Jerry Sorgente. “We have contractors here from Sweden. They crawl through the pipes, find holes and repair them.”