Large Scale Central

Coming soon to your town? aka better start recycling your train

General Discussion
#1

Is this a little overdone?

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/08/city_of_cleveland_to_use_high-.html

Metro - cleveland.com said:
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- It would be a stretch to say that Big Brother will hang out in Clevelanders' trash cans, but the city plans to sort through curbside trash to make sure residents are recycling -- and fine them $100 if they don't.

The move is part of a high-tech collection system the city will roll out next year with new trash and recycling carts embedded with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes.

The chips will allow city workers to monitor how often residents roll carts to the curb for collection. If a chip show a recyclable cart hasn’t been brought to the curb in weeks, a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables.
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Trash carts containing more than 10 percent recyclable material could lead to a $100 fine, according to Waste Collection Commissioner Ronnie Owens.

#2

No.

Our former throw away habits must stop.
Encouragemnt would be better, but coercion is better than nothing.

#3

Also…the city (your taxes) saves money with recycling…at least we do where I live.

Too far…depends on what the compliance level is like

#4

We’re going from Pay $350/year to throw whatever we want to away, to Pay $2 per 40 gallon bag, and recycle the rest. Its causing a huge row in town here, but its going to save us a mountain of money. Every week, we have less than a third of a trash can, but a ton of recycling. We’re a typical family size, but have re-thunk our thinking. We recycle 1-7 plastics, paper, tin/alum cans, and glass. We compost non-protein garbage (a majority of a family’s trash, btw). It just takes a bit of re-thinking and organization, but it will save us a ton of money next year.

#5

Many of you will disagree with me, but, it is my trash and I’ll do what I want with it. Once I purchased that plastic bottle of water, it’s is mine.
Not Big Brother’s. If he wants it, he can buy it back.
No one monitors our trash, (yet), and I doubt they will, because they only accept “certain” types of re-cylables.
We have three collection centers and our trash is burned for electricity by a city owned incinerator/steam generator. They don’t care what gets fed into the furnace.
They don’t want to run out of fuel…

#6
Forrest Scott Wood said:
Is this a little overdone?
If it involves the government, you can bet your sweet ass it's over done............;)
#7

(http://gold.mylargescale.com/vsmith/tempest%20teacup.jpeg)

Not a big deal. We routinely have more stuff going out in our recycling can than we do in the regular trash can, we simply keep two trash cans next to each other in the kitchen, one for regular trash and one for recycling, once you do it for a little while, its very easy to keep the stuff seperated, besides the stuff recycled thru the city is sold by the city to pay for things that helps keeps your local taxes down, think about that.

#8

You can bet if the Govt is involved the more you will pay. Bet on it. Some more of big brothers watchful eye. Yikes. Later RJD

#9

In our area I can drive to a “transfer station” lesss than 1/2 mile from my house that will only accept household trash and recyclables BUT the list of recyclables that is acceptable is so short it is ridiculous. Also they only accept small trash bags and do not show up with bags in your trash cans. They will turn you away. Also anything that does not resemble “normal household trash” gets turned away. So I’ve taken to waiting several weeks and taking ALL my trash to the transfer station on the far side of the next town. About 12 miles away but only a few miles past where I work. I still ahve to sort recyclables the same way (same county) and in addition they will take some yard waste and paper goods and cardboard corrugated products for recycling. There is a bin for appliances and one for metals and they will take tires on certain days. The folks there are much freindlier as well, having treats for the kids & the pets that are not allowed out of cars. It’s a much more painless process there even though it means I need to trailer my trash regularly. I had a load of tires that ahd been used as planters on teh property my in-laws are cleaing up to retire to this fall and the guy was very nice telling me which transfer station would accept them all that day.

Chas

#10

A one cubic mile hole can hold the trash generated in the USA for 215 years. But it would stink!

#11

I agree with John, the government should keeps its nose out of our trash. More importantly, government needs to learn that they work for us, and stop working against us.

Besides, most of this “recycling” business is a huge boondoggle. Very little of it makes sense economically, and much of it is extremely uneconomical. Aluminum cans are one exception, as it is pretty expensive to produce from scratch. Glass, on the other hand, is just sand. Unless you’re reusing the intact bottles (which no one does anymore), you don’t really save a thing by recycling it.

#12

The Saving is in saving the enviroment not just nickels and dimes. If you care about the enviroment you recycle. If you don’t care. Tell your children and grand children I’ll take money over your wellbeing. See how they feel about that. There is more to life than money.
If you want to live in a world of crap then do the same old thing. Don’t care oh yea when you make your train layots don’t forget to scatter trash and garbage around to give it your personal touch.
Remember actions speek louder than words.
Learn to recycle, for a better tomarrow

#13

Recycling is a mixed bag in reality.

Ray, you are correct about the aluminum cans, I recycle mine personally (get about 20 bucks each time I go). Most other materials are a wash at best. My county in north west Florida has a garbage incinerator that makes the county a couple million every year, so anything that is burnable is welcome.

Your are only partially correct about glass. I worked for a glass producer for a while and it was always better to start with recycled glass.

Last summer I was visiting a friend in New Jersey and had the dubious pleasure of watching an entire train of 20’ Waste Management shipping containers go by. My friend informed me that they were going to the port to be shipped out to China so the recyclables could be recycled and shipped back to us in the blister packs we love so dearly. After a bit of research, it seems that GARBAGE is one of our largest exports. GO FIGURE!!

Bob Cope

#14

That may be true if you were the only one living on this planet, but you are not. So what you do may effect others, so now it is there business also.
How wasteful can people be? well just look around… When you travel around just look and note what you see. Now just think the plastic bottles the USuses placesed end to end will go around the world 136 times.
Just look around one can’t even go to a beach anywhere and not see plastic bottles and other assorted junk laying around.
A hole of 27,878.400 cuft. wont hold it all!!

#15

Back in the fifty’s us kids would get a penny for small beer and pop bottles and a nickle for larger ones.
Any neighborhood small grocery would take them and pay you. You usually bought candy at the store with your money anyway.
Why not revive that?

#16

As strange as California is we do have that for cans and bottles but the in-store fplks don’t handle it. There is usually a place to recycle them in the parking lot. It’s actually easier than dragging them into the store.

#17

It seems incomprehensible, but according to industry figures, 75% of all aluminium ever manufactured is still in circulation. One state in Australia still requires a deposit on bottles, that is refunded when the item is returned. At one time all states required a deposit when a drink was purchased. As a child, I would supplement my holiday money by ‘finding’ bottles and returning to a shopkeeper to receive the refund.

One city council in my city, has initiated a campaign to manually sort through customer’s waste and determine if they are doing the right thing. Some refuse collection trucks have cameras mounted inside the tray so that the operator can ascertain if the customer has infringed council policy by not recycling correctly. Another byproduct of these inspections is that personal information gleaned is able to be onsold to marketting/research companies. By law, once an item is disposed of in the refuse/garbage bin, it becomes public property.

#18

Of course recycling is important. But the real issue for me is privacy. If the city of Cleveland needs to keep track of these things have the collector take a peek in the can and leave you a warning note for DOING something wrong, not try to catch you for NOT doing something right, there’s a huge difference there.

Fact is, we are now monitored 24/7. There’s an intersection camera recording if your rear bumper cleared the white line before the light turned red,
1 /4" in the zone, you can expect a ticket. I just read about a town that’s installing cameras to monitor the streets for parking violators. There’s a camera at the ATM, in the parking lot, in the ceiling at WalMart, at the toll booth, etc, etc, etc. How about the X-ray at the airport that can see through your clothes? I’ll bet the Homeland Security folks get a good laugh comparing stories in the break room. Cell phone triangulation and GPS tells Big Brother where you are at all times. Make an on-line inquiry about a product and before you can say “leave me the f— alone”, you’re getting spam trying to sell you a hundred different kinds of E.D. pills. And now, a CHIP in my garbage can? … for chrissake, enough is enough!!!

Walt

#19

Our trash hauler just quit the residential business because the local transfer station is converting to in-line recycling. That means that you dump all of your recyclables in one big bin. They come around with a special truck twice a month and dump the bin. It goes to a facility where low paid workers get to sort everything on a conveyor belt. I bet that’s a fun job. I don’t like the idea because now I have two big ugly 1/4 yard bins in my front yard, one green for garbage and one blue for recyclables.

Penn & Teller did a program on recycling. Their conclusion that was that actually cost more to recycle materials like plastic, than to make new from oil. They said only Aluminum recycling was cost effective. I do know that people pay for the material, but are they using government credits to make up the increased cost over new?

#20
TonyWalsham said:
No.

Our former throw away habits must stop.
Encouragemnt would be better, but coercion is better than nothing.


I agree…below is a quote taken from the original article/topic posted.

" In either case, the property owner receives the citation. Landlords are responsible for making sure their tenants follow the law."

Rentals are a huge issue in my very historic town as you can make 4 or 5 large apartments out of what was a single family home when it was originally built. Really has nothing too do with “Big Brother” (IMO) but just a matter of respect. 9 times outta 10 the “homeowner” is more than compliant as compared too the “property owner” that has 20 too 30 different non caring folk living in their structure !