A notice from the city...

I received a notification from the city some time back (not sure exactly when, I just found it in a pile of other mail) and it states that as of July 1st recycling will only be picked up every other week.

I look at our neighbors. 3 garbage cans, 2 recycling bins at one house. 4 garbage cans and 1 recycling at another. It's like that pretty much all up and down the street, and every one of those cans is stuffed full.

I know it's about making more money for the city (if you "can't" manage with one bin, you can rent another one, and they don't have to send the trucks out as often) but good grief. We take our garbage can out maybe every other week, and it's usually mostly empty. Sometimes longer. Recycling is every third or fourth week. Granted there are only two of us, and we're not big shoppers, but sheesh.

The "logical" solution would be to not create as much garbage in the first place! Buy unpackaged (What? Shop the produce aisle rather than the freezer cases? Are you kidding me?) and compost anything that can be composted. That includes most paper, cardboard boxes, and food waste.

Again, sheeesh.

I'm sure a big part of this is also because China is not taking our recyclables anymore, and there are becoming fewer and fewer depositories for a lot of this stuff.  Your municipality is therefore making less and less profit off of the recyclables and is starting to cost them more overall to pick up your recyclables.  I have been hearing about this problem quite a bit lately.  

Yes, it is likely costing more for the city. Between gas, upkeep for the trucks, salaries, etc., it's probably costing a LOT more. So they essentially cut the costs by 1/4 and raise a little revenue at the same time.

But the amount of garbage being produced by nearly every family on this street (and I don't think we're all that unusual, as a representative sample) is INSANE. How? The couple next door (two people) fills a 50 gallon garbage can and a recycle bin every week. The couple across the street (+ one child) fills two garbage cans. I don't know how that's possible, but somehow they manage it.

Somehow, by some odd miracle : ) most of the people in our society manage this feat on a weekly basis.

When situations like that bother me, I try to remember, I can't control other people, only myself.

Yeah, I know what you mean.  A lot of people don't recycle or compost, and every meal they eat comes out of a box or bag.  I have often noticed as well how much garbage some people put out on the street every week compared to us.

Trace Oswald wrote:When situations like that bother me, I try to remember, I can't control other people, only myself.

I tried for years to get people involved in recycling when I lived in a big city.  It was like talking to a brick wall.  

When we moved to the country there was no reason to talk about it anymore.  There was no recycling available.  Like Trace said we can only control what we do.  If we all do our share the little pieces will help.

Due to the cost of recycling cardboard in our area some towns have stopped accepting cardboard to be recycled.  We use a lot of cardboard under our woodchip mulch and now have several friends who save their cardboard for us for they don't have to pay to toss it in the trash.

Hi,  People will do what people will do. It takes some knowledge, visceral learning, and then add a persons will to change a habit. Most people live by using habits. (ie... I run through the froze vegetable section of the store / or I have to change and go out of my way and stop at the farmers market and then go to the store.) It takes will for that out of the way to become a common place habit and no longer see it as going out of my way.

I remember when nothing was recycled. Then a tax on soda pop had people recycle bottles and cans. It was forced on people as a tax ( even though it wasn't called a tax) to change behavior. Back then 10 cents was like 2 dollars today.  It was emotional to receive cash back from the teller. Then, " recycle stuff " slowly boomed into big corporate business.

Today about 10% of recyclables in the recycle containers actually get processed and reused. The rest is either burned or dumped into the ground. And we pay for it. Therefore is it better to have one truck pick it up, or have two and spend more time, money, and resources than in the original one truck?  

Arthur Angaran wrote:Today about 10% of recyclables in the recycle containers actually get processed and reused. The rest is either burned or dumped into the ground. And we pay for it. Therefore is it better to have one truck pick it up, or have two and spend more time, money, and resources than in the original one truck?  

A friend (ex-husband) of a friend worked for the landfill. He said both trucks dump in the same place. The idea of "recycling" is a feel-good for people who want to think they're making a difference.

With a 50 gallon container, each of those neighbors are filling at least the equivalent of a 5 gallon bucket with garbage. Every. Day. It's mindboggling. I keep going through these mental gymnastics, trying to figure out how it's even possible.

It's interesting to watch people.

Trace Oswald wrote:When situations like that bother me, I try to remember, I can't control other people, only myself.

Many  years ago when I was  living in Vegas we had the recycling program with the trash pick up, aluminum, paper, glass each had their own bin  every week and they would also take old engine oil if you put it out in a plastic container.  Many times I would come home and the trash was gone but they left the recycling, with papers blowing across the neighborhood.  Calling to ask about this they said if the recycling bin was full they couldn't take anymore, which makes sense but the heavy piece of trash I had on the papers was taken and nothing was left to hold the papers in the bin.  I don't know how many times I had to bring the recycling back into the garage because they didn't take it but the final straw for me was when they did take the paper and other stuff but left the old oil dropping the gallon jug on its side on the sidewalk where it leaked all over leaving a mess for me to clean it up.  That was my last attempt at recycling, after that everything went in the trash and the oil went to a friends repair shop where he filtered it and burned it as fuel in his diesel.

I have seen a few times on TV shows (kinda like Dirty Jobs type of shows) where the bigger trash companies have conveyor belts for all the trash to be sorted and people work the lines grabbing plastic and metal and glass and wood and tossing them to their own sorting areas.  With the big money in trash collection this should be common practice for all big trash businesses.  We pay to have it collected, they make money on selling the stuff, why do I have to sort it for them?  Especially if they are not reliable in collecting the separated items.

Just being the wife and I, we don't generate a whole lot of trash. I rarely put out more than 1 can and it usually ain't full.
On the mountain, I break it down to burn or no burn. I burn my class A trash* (see below), donate the scrape metal to my BiL for recycling and have the rest, which ain't much, hauled off. I am mindful of what goes in the trash in the first place. Used motor oil goes to be recycled (strained of impurities and then sold as the cheaper, off brand oil).
I have a conundrum about styrofoam or petroleum products. Put the carbon in the air now by burning, or put it in the ground for many years/generations/centuries? Which is better? Neither is a good solution. One could drive themselves nuts thinking about it, but what can one do?
Packaging makes up the bulk of household trash, so how can we reduce that? Unfortunately, one either drives from store to store looking for minimal packaging (bulk buying), or one cuts costs by just paying for the packaging to save the storage, gas and time.
Manufacturers manipulate the definitions of terms such as 'grass fed' and 'hormone free' to make it sound like they care. If they cared they wouldn't have to tells us they cared, they'd show us. We buy those products, generate trash and feel good that we're doing something for the environment.
Below is a breakdown of the different classes of fires firefighters use to identify what they're getting into. I thought it might be helpful to know what you're burning if you burn your trash like I do.

*Class A (alpha) trash - anything that burns leaving an Ash; paper, wood, animals, humans. A Screaming Alpha refers to a human who burned to death.

Class B (bravo) trash - anything that burns giving off Black smoke; chemicals, tires and petrofuels

Class C (charlie) trash - anything that burns due to an electrical or a Circuit fire

Class D (delta) trash - any metal that burns: magnesium

I know you can donate cardboard on BoxGiver. It’s an online platform where people exchange cardboard boxes and packing supplies. Maybe that can be a solution!