“Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear
to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow
it on somebody.”
–Calvin Coolidge (you know, from back when “they” had ideas)
]]>Did anyone mention the effect that single-stream mixing of materials has on the recycle-ability of the materials collected?
]]>The first question is whether the weight of materials is just from residential collection, or all collection divided by total number of households. Including some or all of the commercial materials would certainly increase the amount per household in all categories but probably result in a lower percentage of recycled material.
The demographics will also have a significant effect. In an apartment building the average number of occupants in a household is likely to be less than in a suburban region. I don’t see any reason to say a 4 person suburban household that discards and recycles twice as much as 2 person urban one is better or worse.
I agree with the many comments that it is unfortunate that the City Council continues to waste money on unnecessary and undesirable pet projects like single stream recycling and especially the Recyclebank program. It simply seems that the majority of council do not believe that the city has any financial problems.
]]>Will Rogers used to say:
“Just be thankful you’re not getting all the government you’re paying for.”
]]>Of course we’ve already paid for it and took the consultants at their word without actually thinking through it’s long term effects or dissecting the one sided information that was presented to council.
]]>Clearly the intention here is to spend money, rather than to spend money wisely.
Maybe I’ll cut out my RFI tag and tape it to one of my more wasteful neighbors’ bins.
]]>Other neighborhoods where residents are not as enthusiastic about the three R’s could have lower participation, sending less to the MRF while continuing to send more potentially recyclable trash to the landfill.
It seem strange to have a system that has the potential to reward those who strive to consume and send less to the MRF and equally reward those who consume more stuff and send it to the landfill and the MRF.
Because of the rewards system, I suspect there will be a lot of empty or mostly empty carts being picked up every week in the neighborhoods where people take the three R’s seriously.
The neighborhoods and individuals who are not as serious will most likely continue to be non participants and continue to consume and send to the landfill and the MRF more of the stuff that we’re trying to keep from going there.
]]>Do they weigh recycling AND landfill-bound waste? This would give us a handle on how much waste and what percentage is recycled.
And I still think the incentive system is dumb.
The main win I see is that they’ll take #5 plastic. The implication in this article is that they will accept #6, e.g. polystyrene.
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