Comments on: Column: Pedaling and the Price of Recycling

By: Kelly Stark

Kelly Stark — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:24:24 +0000

I LOVE Samuel Rosewig’s comment (#12) about paying a deposit at the time of purchase. What a great way to encourage recycling of hazardous and hard-to-recycle items! And if the original purchaser can’t be bothered to recycle, there’s an economic incentive for someone else to do it.

LOVE IT LOVE IT!

By: suswhit

suswhit — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:29:06 +0000

lol. :-)

By: Rod Johnson

Rod Johnson — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:56:46 +0000

Um, that’s a sentence fragment there. *tsk* :-\

By: suswhit

suswhit — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:35:47 +0000

Eh! Ann Arbor. Where everyone is an editor! ;-)

By: TeacherPatti

TeacherPatti — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 03:21:42 +0000

Vermicide! Absolutely :) Seriously, it was an awful shock to see my little pets all…gone. They had bred and had little families and everything. At least they are together in worm heaven.
I clearly need to stop thinking about this :)

By: Dan Ezekiel

Dan Ezekiel — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:07:47 +0000

In times of low market prices, recycling some materials costs more money than the proceeds from the sale of the materials collected. However, throwing the same materials in the landfill isn’t free either, and it always costs less to recycle materials than to landfill them. Trash is always subsidized.

The city wisely (in my opinion) subsidizes the cost of recycling materials at times of low market prices, because if it constantly changed the materials collected, people wouldn’t remember what they could and couldn’t recycle, and volumes would plunge. When a material’s price subsequently spiked, citizens would have been ‘trained’ not to recycle it.

By: Rod Johnson

Rod Johnson — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:34:42 +0000

Shouldn’t it be “vermicide,” though?

/pedant

By: suswhit

suswhit — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:48:06 +0000

“It works great until the f’in raccoons that winter in your garage knock the top off and commit wormacide. Then it’s tragic.”

I’m so sorry for your loss. ;-) But I love your use of the words “wormacide” and “tragic.”

By: Edith

Edith — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 09:23:48 +0000

Goodwill has a program for free electronics recycling.

By: TeacherPatti

TeacherPatti — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:22:06 +0000

Seconding Linda Diane’s (and others) composting recommendation. I have to admit that I was at first afraid that it would smell, well, like stank. It doesn’t though. Since I’m essentially lazy much of the time, I bought a nice ceramic temporary compost holder that I keep under my sink and it happily holds scraps until I haul my butt out to the pile.
I’d also like to recommend vermicomposting (worm composting). It works great until the f’in raccoons that winter in your garage knock the top off and commit wormacide. Then it’s tragic.