How the revolution in municipal waste collection technology came to Prague
Today’s excursion into the history of mixed municipal waste management, which we will set out for in Prague, will start in 1923, when 110-liter tin collection containers for this waste “invaded” our metropolis. And because then (and for a long time later) much of the municipal waste was ash, these containers became known as garbage cans.
So we should have trash cans. But there were no so-called cocoons in which the contents of the bins were poured. The garbage cans in Prague were changed piece by piece, full after empty, and modified trucks with a low loading area began to be used in their transport.
And what collection technology did this exchange of garbage can follow? Previously, people at the signaling by ringing converged with their rubbish (not always everyone managed to do it) to ordinary cars with classic bodies (due to dust, the cars began to cover from above). For the most part, horse-drawn cars were used in Prague until the mid-1920s (ie even at the beginning of the exchange bins period), but as early as 1914, the first two trucks appeared there.
But back to the bins in the era of exchange. For their collection, Škoda Sentinel steam utility vehicles were gradually hired in Prague, and to increase capacity, they were usually still equipped with a lift. The “garbage can” sentinel was only one of the versions of this commercial vehicle manufactured in Pilsen’s Škoda since 1924 on the basis of a British license.
At the end of the 1920s, a total of 38 garbage trucks carrying garbage cans drove in Prague, of which 28 were steam sentinels.
With the advent of garbage cans in 1923, it also began to pay for the removal of garbage produced by households, until then it was free of charge. Tradesmen had to pay before and larger industrial companies with a large production waste (ash) arranged for their own T-shirt.
The steam sentinel in the garbage truck version carried the entire garbage can, here is a car with a lift to increase transport capacity.
The waste was used by farmers
Farmers have been collecting municipal waste since time immemorial and using it as fertilizer. However, the hordes of “fertilizing” wagons rattling on the city pavement were not a great adornment of any city, quite the contrary.
In 1925, an economic cooperative was established in Jenč for the recovery of Prague garbage. There was a large repository of this material, which was then distributed among the individual peasants, members of the cooperative.
The waste was transported to Jenč from Prague by rail, daily. The wagons were loaded in the municipal yard in Holešovice, where full garbage cans were dumped in the era of garbage sentinels. Garbage can be emptied directly into the wagons. In the second half of the 1920s, 30 to 35 wagons are loaded daily in summer, 40 to 50 in winter, or even up to 60 wagons. For example, for the whole of 1927, according to the period press, this made a total of around 14,000 wagons, while in Greater Prague there were to be over 31,000 garbage cans.
But not all of the Prague waste went to the cooperative in Jenč, as evidenced by the section “Letters of readers” in the monthly Auto, where in the fourth issue in 1934 a kind of Mr. Robert Sigmund broke out very decently: “… they should not suffer to ride a horse-drawn carriage in close rows, but should be ordered to drive these carriages, as cyclists are ordered to travel at a certain distance from each other, as overtaking such a column of carriages is dangerous. These wagons drive mainly during the sugar campaign and then when removing garbage from Prague. I drive along the Poděbradská road and these carriages run there regularly. I point out the fact, and it could certainly be a remedy here, if every administration of the large estate (because only these buy rubbish for fertilization) would draw attention to this indecency and in the sugar factory as well, … “
And in 1934, a new large customer of Prague waste appeared, who took over the baton from the agricultural cooperative in Jenč. We will return to it at the end of the article, after the exchange of garbage trucks.
Praga-Kuka car for municipal waste collection from the early 1930s. These were the first cocoons made and used in Czechoslovakia.
The first cocoons in Czechoslovakia
Keller und Knappich Augsburg (KUKA), a well-known German company which, among other things, was engaged in the design and manufacture of municipal superstructures for commercial vehicles (sweepers and scrapers for street cleaning, etc., this portfolio of municipal vehicles was widely introduced), introduced in 1927 a special municipal waste collection truck. The garbage cans were not only dumped on site into the new garbage truck, but above all it had a mechanism for moving and compressing waste in the transport area.
It is, of course, true that long before that garbage trucks were created all over the developed world, into which garbage cans were dumped. But these were cars of a more conventional design with a more or less modified classic body without an internal mechanism, from which the waste at the landfill was then emptied again, following the example of dump trucks.
The very first such more primitive cars appeared as early as 1897 in Chiswick, London. In the 1920s and 1930s, some of these garbage trucks no longer looked very primitive. Their body was no longer a classic modified, but a new, special design, so to be without an internal mechanism for moving / compressing waste.
But even after the arrival of garbage trucks with working mechanisms, and it was not just cars according to the German model Kuka, garbage trucks in original and less sophisticated designs survived for a long time (not only in operation but also in production).
For example, in 1931, a garbage truck based on the Tatra 23 was introduced, it was a truck without any mechanism inside the transport space. At that time, the first cocoons, ie more sophisticated garbage trucks with an internal mechanism, were already driving in Prague.
The waste was emptied from the Garbage Tatra 23 in the same way as from the classic dump truck. This is a demonstration photo, in the back operation, of course, had to open the back cabin. This car was created only in a prototype.
The new garbage truck from the German company Keller und Knappich Augsburg (the genesis of the Czech nickname kukavůz for cars of this concept is clear; in 1927, the KUKA brand was used) was characterized by a rotating cylindrical body (drum) with a spiral inside. The drum was surrounded by a sheet metal body (but it was not a necessity and not every car manufactured under Kuka’s license had it in the world).
When filling the car with waste, slowly turn in the direction of the cabins in the direction of the lights (when viewed from the rear, ie from the point of view of the fillers), slightly forward (when the car) and pressed. At the opposite turn, the drum then emptied. For example, in the case of kavozi produced under license by ČKD, it was stated that the mechanism consumes the output of three horses.
At the end of the 1920s, our ČKD concern, which produces, among other things, cars under the Praga brand, purchased a license for the superstructure of a garbage truck. It is therefore logical that our own chassis were then used for the production of cocoons. This is how the first Czechoslovak cocoons were created, then also known as Praga-Kuka.
Praga-Kuka car for municipal waste collection
In 1930, Prague ordered 28 Praga cocoons, of which the first four had a drum volume of 8 m3 and the next 24 cars received a drum with a volume of 10 m3.
In 1934, a waste incinerator was put into operation in Prague’s Vysočany. The construction of the incinerator was planned for a longer period of time and according to the original assumptions it was supposed to be built in 1932, but somehow it took longer. In fact, it was the second waste incinerator in our territory, the first started working in 1905 in Brno.
Since 1934, Praga cocoons have been transporting Prague waste to the new incinerators in Vysočany instead of to Holešovice.
Praga cars as “kukavozy” for municipal waste collection