My First Visit from the Trash Inspector.

[ultrarunner]

We have a lot of mandates and the list gets longer...

I manage a commercial property in a downtown district with zero lot lines... there is no "Yard" waste. I am still required to have the minimum 64 gallon tote for yardwaste... I brought it home because there is no place to store it onsite... the dumpster pen just is not big enough.

With each mandate comes new fees...

For 22 years the Hospital has cardboard recycling... we have had locks cut by scavengers wanting cardboard... now there is a worldwide glut so this is no longer a problem... the area is plagued with midnight trash dumpers... especially along the right of ways...

As a kid living in Hayward in the 60's we always had paper drives and starting in the 70's we had glass recycling bins at church... clear, green and brown... my family volunteered to run it and did so from 1972 to 1998.

What we have now is three huge Waste Management trucks coming by weekly at home... one for trash, one for co-mingled recyclables and one for yard waste. the trucks are so large it takes many attempts to turn around at the end of our blind street and the blacktop is wearing down from the heavy 10 wheelers turning around.

It must cost a lot of money and a tripling of staff and trucks to "Service" the waste stream...

I think I'm turning into a grouch... because a lot of what I see makes little sense but resistance is futile.

 

[downsizingnow48]

I went to graduate school, and I get confused on what goes where when I belly up to a row of cans, each for a specific material. So then I just throw everything in the garbage

In Mendocino County you almost need an instructor to understand the recycling rules. Plus it is Mafia-level expensive. So I put everything into black bags and haul to our Sacramento place. In Sacramento County it is easy, garbage goes in the garbage and everything else is recycling. That is at curbside. But if you empty a dump trailer at the County transfer station they only ask you to separate out metal. Everything else gets mashed up and hauled off to the landfill. In Virginia the transfer station had different dumpsters for garbage, cardboard, metal, clear glass, colored glass, plastic, and probably some other stuff. Easy to use if you kept half a dozen trash cans at home. But most folks just dumped everything except metal in the garbage dumpster.

 

[skipples]

Holy Moly! That's a lot of water.. That looks near a big as Table Rock Lake!

Ha! The pacific is quite large.....but maybe not as sizable as your lake out there in MO...... :]

 

[dmccarty]

...

What we have now is three huge Waste Management trucks coming by weekly at home... one for trash, one for co-mingled recyclables and one for yard waste. the trucks are so large it takes many attempts to turn around at the end of our blind street and the blacktop is wearing down from the heavy 10 wheelers turning around.

It must cost a lot of money and a tripling of staff and trucks to "Service" the waste stream...

I think I'm turning into a grouch... because a lot of what I see makes little sense but resistance is futile.

When we lived in the city, we had recycling program that had two trucks and crews running through the neighborhood. One truck/crew was for garbage and the other truck/crew was for recyclables. I think the recycle truck had an extra man on board to separate the trash. I looked in the city budget to try to figure out how much the extra truck/crew cost to operate vs the money the recyclables brought back to the tax payer. Since I could find no such mention, the reasonable assumption was that the cost to collect the recyclable trash exceeded the income from the trash. This was before the market for recyclable trash crashed.

Even if the price of recycle trash was higher back before the economy went bad, I don't see how the higher prices would cover the cost of running an extra truck and crew.

Our county has a very nice recycle program and since the people have to take their trash to the collection centers and segregate the trash one would think the program makes money. I have looked to try to find the expense vs income stream of recycle program but it is not made public which is odd. The only cost to the program would be the different recycle containers and the cost to get to market so the program should be making money.

Later,
Dan

 

[ultrarunner]

There was a time when scavengers would be everywhere on the eve of collection... have not seen any for some time.

 

[tallyho8]

When they re-started recycling here a couple of years ago they started charging everyone a fee for the recycling because they said it cost more money to pick up and recycle the materials than they made selling them. Then they passed a law making it illegal for scavengers to pick up the materials left in the recycling boxes in front of your house. :confused2:

 

[ultrarunner]

We have the same anti-scavenging law which are ignored with impunity...

It the police will not respond to a residential burglary... not much chance of them coming out to enforce anti-scavenging...

So I have been approved for grant to purchase the required inside containers...

What can I say???

 

[fordmantpw]

$1250/month for a 6 yard dumpster? Wow!

I manage a dumpster for a neighborhood. It's an 8 yard, and we pay $175/month. Now, it's only a once-weekly pickup, but double that, and you are still nearly 4 times the cost of ours. I knew Cali was bad, but dang! And we don't have any trash cops!

Wait, I just figured out why it's so high. Gotta pay the trash cops...geez!

 

[dickfoster]

We have a lot of mandates and the list gets longer...

I manage a commercial property in a downtown district with zero lot lines... there is no "Yard" waste. I am still required to have the minimum 64 gallon tote for yardwaste... I brought it home because there is no place to store it onsite... the dumpster pen just is not big enough.

With each mandate comes new fees...

For 22 years the Hospital has cardboard recycling... we have had locks cut by scavengers wanting cardboard... now there is a worldwide glut so this is no longer a problem... the area is plagued with midnight trash dumpers... especially along the right of ways...

As a kid living in Hayward in the 60's we always had paper drives and starting in the 70's we had glass recycling bins at church... clear, green and brown... my family volunteered to run it and did so from 1972 to 1998.

What we have now is three huge Waste Management trucks coming by weekly at home... one for trash, one for co-mingled recyclables and one for yard waste. the trucks are so large it takes many attempts to turn around at the end of our blind street and the blacktop is wearing down from the heavy 10 wheelers turning around.

It must cost a lot of money and a tripling of staff and trucks to "Service" the waste stream...

I think I'm turning into a grouch... because a lot of what I see makes little sense but resistance is futile.

Yet they and maybe you too, keep electing the same idiots into office. Moonbeam is on his fourth term already and when someone with some sense tries to run for office they turn out and riot in the streets. There is a saying that people will eventually always get the government that they truly deserve.

 

[ultrarunner]

The rioting in the streets really does happen with those responsible often getting a pass.

I really feel for those small mom and pop business owners with trashed and looted storefronts and the same for motorists.

Had a discussion about how much things have changed and it really is astounding...