Solar Powered Food Carts Coming to NYC

The city will get about 400 carts starting this month.

When a person thinks of New York, they don’t always think of living the greenest lifestyle possible. However, the city has been making many, many strides in living the greenest lifestyle possible. One of the most celebrated parts of New York culture are those small food stalls that line the sidewalks around the city, particularly near the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Central Park. However, those stalls aren’t exactly environmentally friendly:

“I breathe it in, I get the fumes, I get the smell of the food,” Don Ward, a Manhattan shoe shiner who works next to a cart, told the Wall Street Journal. “I get home and my clothing smells like gas.” It seems like Ward isn’t alone in thinking like that, and many New Yorkers and environmentalists have started looking for alternatives.

The most promising is an initiative by Queens-based MOVE Systems, who now has the plans to distribute 500 “green” vendor carts. These carts will have solar panels and rechargeable batteries that will power all of the tools they will need: sinks, refrigerators, and grills. The carts that have been dubbed MRV100 Hybrids, measure approximately the same size as, is not a little larger than, the existing carts roughly 5 feet wide by 10 feet long and reportedly can be adapted to serve a wide variety of cuisine.

This program is supported by the city, but is funded almost entirely through donations from the community and private partnerships. One of the best parts of the whole idea is that because MOVE is offering these carts free of charge, 100 of the carts are already earmarked for disabled veterans.

While there hasn’t been any announcement on where those other 400 carts will go among the 3,000 vendors operating in Manhattan and its boroughs. The carts should be out by Memorial Day.