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Smart Trash Carts Tell If You Haven't Been Recycling
Starting next year Cleveland residents face paying a $100 fine if they don't recycle, and the city's new high-tech trash cans will keep track if they don't. The new cans are embedded with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes which keep track of how often residents take them to the curb. If the chip shows you haven't brought your recycle can out in a while, a lucky trash supervisor will go through your can looking for recyclables. From the article: "Trash carts containing more than 10 percent recyclable material could lead to a $100 fine, according to Waste Collection Commissioner Ronnie Owens. Recyclables include glass, metal cans, plastic bottles, paper and cardboard."
Here's the episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzLebC0mjCQ
In brief: Most of the items we separate don't get recycled because nobody buys the trash (i.e. there's no market for used paper or used milk jugs). Precious metal like aluminum and copper is the only thing they succeed in selling. But the rest? The city then has no choice but to dump the goods in the landfill anyway.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The trashcans just tell if they have been rolled out to be picked up. If they haven't recorded a roll out then you get fined if your trash has more than 10% recyclable material.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
The chip IDs whether it is a recycle bin or a regular trash can. This allows the automated trucks to automatically sort where it goes and tell them if you haven't put the recycle bin out in a while.
sudo mod me up
The only smart trashcan I've ever seen was Oscar the grouch. Considering how "smart" the power meters(and authorities) are in most cities, this will probably be a flop.
Day by day we march towards complete and total Orwellian overwatch.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Ticket for not taking out trash, ticket for taking out trash too early, ticket for not taking containers in early enough, ticket for too much weight in trash. Is this really helping out the environment or just a hidden way to increase taxes? I do note that their metric of success is how many tickets they issue.
I'd mix in non-recyclable trash in my recycle bin just to spite this new program.
Alles in ordnung
Excessive regulation http://www.freedomworks.org/publications/the-danger-of-over-regulation
When it becomes naturally profitable to recycle people will do so themselves. Right now I don't throw away aluminum, stainless steel, brass, copper, lead, steel, some types of glass and several plastics plus newspapers. I use the glass, plastic and newspapers myself. I've found two places that will compete for the stainless, copper, lead and brass which I happen to come across and make my collection and transport costs worthwhile. The steel and aluminum go to another salvager which is reasonably close and pays well. I do this for my own benefit and will keep doing it regardless of the states insistence I line their pockets.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
yeah - good call - its not a smart trashcan it is just more spying by the man - so I'll pay the kid next door to roll that baby to the curb a couple of times a week, problem solved
Not revenue from the fine -- revenue from selling the recyclables.
I have to throw trash down the chute into a central container for my entire apt complex and I know a lot of places here have that mechanism. How are they going to figure out then whose trash is it? Also, what if you take your trash out yourself and not use trash services. I know a lot of people who do that - saves 20$ a month.
However, since you mentioned it, the area where I live does sort through all of the trash at the landfill and separates out recyclables there. They don't have "technology" to do it but actual people. They dump all of the trash on a big conveyor belt and people pick out recyclables. I don't know how this compares in cost, recovery percent, etc. but they have been doing it for years.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I'm wondering how long it will be until my recyclables are considered public property even if I don't put them in the recycling bin.
"I'm sorry sir, it is now illegal to sell your aluminum cans yourself, you must by law dispose of them in the bin to subsidize the cost of disposing of the non-recyclables, and the part of the "recyclable" stuff that we lose money on."
So to beat the system I can just attach the RFID to a big rock, put the big rock where it will be right beside my trash can when it's on the curb and then the recycling truck comes by it picks up my RFID tag and they never know that I'm not recycling.
My guess is that people will just start dumping all of their trash in the recycle trash cans.
That way they don't have to worry about sorting the trash + they avoid the fine.
Of course, lots of resources on the web about this as well as "garbage recycling deniers" but a good summary page is here: http://www.uos.harvard.edu/fmo/recycling/myths.shtml
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Recycling, in limited forms, is reasonable. But for the most part it is a PR game and has no real impact on anything.
Post-consumer materials, like plastic, is almost never recycled because of the contamination issues. A water bottle can be recycled but if one neck ring from a cap gets into the mix the entire batch is worthless. As of yet, this level of sorting and handling removing neck rings and caps can only be done by hand - at union wages for the most part. This eliminates any reason for recycling water bottles or milk containers - it costs maybe 100x what the recycled materials would be worth to sort them to that level.
Paper is one of those iffy items. If you have a source of clean paper and can sort out coated papers from uncoated (magazines from newspapers, for example) recycling it makes sense and the pulp from processing uncoated paper can be used in a large variety of materials. Unfortunately, getting coated paper into the mix changes things enough that it can only be used in a few applications. So we are back to a very complicated sorting scheme if it is post-consumer. Another problem with post-consumer is "dirty" paper. Food waste mixed in or other contaminates again seriously limits the utility of recycled materials, so much so that it is almost always just dumped.
So anyone talking about post-consumer paper recycing is almost always dealing with clean products like newspapers that can be sorted or office materials that often do not need to be. They aren't talking about taking a mix of papers from curbside recycling efforts because the costs to process that are large and the markets for the output very restricted.
Metals, especially aluminum, have been profitable for quite a while. So much so that there are machines that can sort out the metal containers - by type - quickly. Glass containers can be cleaned and sorted but the value is far less there because of different types of glass being mixed in and the general impracticality of sorting it.
So what happens to curbside recycling materials? I seriously doubt anyone is hand-sorting and dealing with contamination issues like neck rings. A sorting machine to pick out the metal bits is easy and should be a part of any recycling effort. Glass is probably a big question mark. Paper? Almost certainly it is dumped.
When people had to sort their own stuff it gave the impression of it being more valuable, but the contamination issues were still there preventing most of the stuff from being used.
While Penn and Teller's presentation on this may be a bit dated, from everything I see they are still mostly right. It is a feel-good program for both people recycling and for municipalities. The limited amount of materials that are recovered from the recycling stream do earn enough to make it almost - but not quite - worth doing. But the PR value is priceless.
Maybe what we need is something like the X Prize for a reliable way of automatically sorting trash. It seems there's some decent profit in recyclables, so why does sorting through trash still require manual labor?
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I'm old enough to remember when people didn't litter like they do today...when graffiti was rare-to-unknown...when people took their trash out and brought in the empty barrels and containers promptly. When oversight is not required because people behave responsibly, there is no demand - no motivation - for more government oversight.
We're trapped in a vicious circle, actually...the nation's leaders set horrible examples with their personal greed and self-centered behavior, the people follow their lead, to which the nation's leaders respond with laws designed to rectify everybody else's behavior. Heaven forbid that they just behave ethically and morally themselves and refuse to tolerate anything but the same from their peers.
I.e., heaven forbid that our leaders lead.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Because government prefers to pass the onus on to citizens rather than take responsibility. Besides, they already have too much to do. Clearly citizens' time is less valuable than those who get paid to sort garbage.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
In the little town where I live, we pay $2 per bag of garbage picked up at the curb (kerb). Recycle is collected free. The more aggressively I recycle, the less I pay in "bag tags" to the slimy city council, who spend it on new pickup trucks for their greasy-haired hillbilly workers to drive around in all day just doing nothing at all ... oh, was I going on a bit? Anyway, we compost for the same reason -- it costs us less in garbage fees and also garners some nice greenie points and a pat on the back.
Beer, liquor and wine containers all have refundable deposits where I live, so they don't go into the recycle anyway.
If we could reduce the amount of bloody tim-horton cups littering the streets of Ontario, it would be a better place to live.
Doh.
Yep, the garbage man wont notice the dirty diaper that comes rolling out of the trashcan marked aluminum.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Just empty your bathroom wastebacket out last before putting out your trash, so that all the snotty tissues, panty liners, used diapers, etc. are all on the top.
If some city inspector sees that and is still willing to dive in to get the goods on you, I'd say that's a $100 fine well earned.
.
Great, my trash can is now smarter than I.
Why is it we insist upon such complicated schemes for getting people to recycle? A good old fashion deposit scheme seems a much more effective alternative, although it does require something be done at the state or federal level, and a whole lot less intrusive. It works like this...
Require any store that sell beverage containers to accept them in return for cash or credit.
Require any large store that sells them provide automated reverse vending machines (Tomra) at the front of the store and they must pay out cash.
Barcodes must be attached to the product and intact for there to be a refund.
Raise the deposit on various items until you meet specific recycling rate targets.
Make defrauding the machine a felony.
This is hardly an original idea, but it works. You can easily achieve 80+% recycling rates for bottles and cans.
Downside - the usual bitching from the usual people that either hate the idea that they might be helping out their fellow man or vested interests like bottlers that think it will impact sales.
Some here are old enough to remember getting paid by the pound for aluminum cans. But, now I find myself paying for the service of recycling my recyclables. Recyclable materials have economic value, do they not? And, I paid for them when I bought the original products that utilized them, did they not? And he who receives the recycled material from me will extract economic value from them, will he not? That seems like a case study of win-win&win economics&environmentalism.
So how exactly did the get-paid-for-recycling model fail?
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
What a great solution, and as always, fixing the wrong problem just because we have a technology to do it. We penalize people for having more than a certain fraction of recyclables in the trash, but do nothing about how much absolute amount of trash there is.
Every kind of recycling incentive program we have is a bandaid to what is really needed -- the prices of things that reflect their true cost to society.
So put out a soda can in your recycling can every week.
Seriously, I recycle for three reasons. I like my city selling the stuff and almost breaking even on picking it up. It really does seem to be better for the environment. Our recycling pickup is free, while we pay $0.50 per bag for trash pickup, so we have a small individual economic incentive.
I'll just recycle everything and leave it to the plants to figure out the rest.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
IMHO it would be far more efficient to take care of the separation at the plant rather than at the house. There is a lot of waste that goes into:
1) Cleaning
2) Separating into bins
3) Separate trash routes to pick it up
4) storage and special handling of non-valuable recycling materials
I went on a tour of a high tech landfill once, they basically stored the non-valuable materials (e.g. glass, plastics) and when the bins were full, it went in the landfill.
There is no way they earn $26/ton for recyclables, unless they are getting it via grants, tax breaks, etc.. and other neat financial tricks to make you think they make money, when in actuality it is the tax base subsidizing the cost of the financial waste.
If the cost of the process of gathering and recycling can't be self sustainable, you are lighting a stack of your own money on fire when you do recycle it.
So, naysayers, instead of just telling me i'm wrong, show me the energy balance equation that proves me wrong. Because shredding and compacting
trash has been and appears to still be the most efficient waste management solution.
... garbage throws out you.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Hey, it's your choice. You could vote in favor of higher taxes (or disposal fees) to cover the cost of hiring trash sorters. I prefer to pay lower taxes/fees and do it myself.
.sig withheld by request
Also homeless people instead of begging at intersections can just go around and collect bottles and cans for the deposit.
My 84 year old father told me during the 1940s when he was out of work after the war he collected bottles that were along
side the road. Theres nothing orwellian about can and bottle deposits. Its not a fine its a tax, a refundable tax at that that
is effective in promoting recycling.
Trash pick-up is a municipal service - they have every right to stipulate that you should follow certain conditions in order to use their service. If you don't want to use their service, I'm sure that they won't mind. But by agreeing to use it, you accept their terms, and if you violate them then you pay a penalty. Seems more like a business than a government in this way.
But, despite partaking in countless similar arrangements with government and business alike, you extrapolate this one contract to some sort of dystopian future with "Re-education Camps" and the like... really, come on. Take off the tin-foil hat and get some sun!
Hey mate, spare a sig?
At least one suburb of Portland will charge extra if trash is above the top line of their Kitchen Wastebasket on Steroids dumpster
But still under the closed frickin' dome-shaped lid!
"The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games." - Eugene Jarvis
I actually have the problem of generating so little trash that I only fill my small carbage cart every three months, and thus end up paying about $60 to have it emptied. They refuse to stop charging me for the cart, even if I find alternate arrangements for garbage handling.
Only in Cleveland would they hose you like this. They are always trying to become big brother there. Glad I got out when I did.
Cut/extract the RFID tag from the 'recycle' bin, and duct tape it to the backside of your regular trashcan. Problem solved.
Cleveland is a hell hole, financially ruined by decades of corrupt entitlement/welfare government. This is nothing more than another way to impose a tax on the citizenry - calling it a fine - to pay for their bankrupt big government programs.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
I'm old enough to remember when people didn't litter like they do today...when graffiti was rare-to-unknown...when people took their trash out and brought in the empty barrels and containers promptly.
Puh-lese. Littering is MUCH less prevalent than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Remember the PSA they used to run on TV with the crying Indian? I do, and I remember how much worse the litter used to be back in those days.
Don't get me wrong. There are still an awful lot of slobs out there who litter. But from what I see in the areas I travel the problem is better than in the "good old days."
The things that are very hard are those that are neither one nor the other, eg: fresh juice cartons: waxed paper carton with a plastic pourer and lid. They can't go into one of the boxes and pulling it to bits is just too time consuming. The supermarkets could help by making things that were easier to recycle.
I like it when my black bin is empty, or almost, when the bin men come -- please lean on your suppliers to make life easier for people like me.
Other cities, like CmdrTaco's nearby Ann Arbor are using positive reinforcement to encourage recycling. It offers "points" for recycling. "Points can be redeemed for rewards - such as discounts and offers -- from local and national businesses".
It will be interesting to see which approach works better in terms of improving recycling, though I suspect that Ann Arbor's recycling rate is already pretty high.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Over here in germany we have a rather complex sorting mechanism for trash, but after a while you get used to it. We seperate: Normal trash, duales System Deutschland (dual system germany), which is everything with this http://www.dokublog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/der-gruene-punkt.jpg symbol on it (plastic, tin cans et cetera), paper, glass, ash from burning coal or wood, bulky waste, electronic devices, chemicals and hazardous materials, batteries and in some states tin cans get collected seperately. After a while it's a no brainer and it's a good thing to do for the environment.
"Die endgueltige Teilung Deutschlands - das ist unser Auftrag." - Chlodwig Poth
You've missed the point entirely. The quoted myth is arguing that most or all trash gets sorted anyway. This is not remotely true. The Cleveland authorities look through some people's trash to see whether it contains recyclable materials, not to actually perform the separation for them.
Another non sequitur. If 40% of the population is doing something, I'd say it's pretty popular, wouldn't you? But that's not even a majority.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
In many towns, the sorters are not paid - they are people like shoplifters and other petty criminals that have received "community service" sentences. They have to spend a few saturdays sorting trash.
This space available.
Reduce the need for new paper and we reduce the number of trees that are be planted. (There are more trees in the US now than there were before the industrial revolution).
Citation needed please
Or we could just not recycle AND not sort the trash. There's a thought!
"burglarized" = "burgled" Stop inventing words.
As far as I'm aware, this is standard American English. No, really!
;-)
Did you know that Americans live in fear of being raperized, attackerized, muggerized or robberized? It's true!
But no one is willing to do it.
1st) Impose a ban on disposable plastic bottles, forcing every company (I'm looking at you Coca Cola) to use either glass or hard plastic, reusable bottles.
2nd) Define a limit on packaging, that is a ratio of Product size/weight vs. packaging size/rate. If companies go over that limit, you make them pay through the nose for it.
3rd) New law mandating all technology companies to provide a 5 year warranty on all their products, and all software/hardware companies to provide at least 5 years of backward compatibility and usefulness on all their systems. That'll bring back quality hardware, raise prices a little bit, and extend hardware's lifetime 10x.
4rd) Ban all the beautiful but unrecyclable plasic+cardboard boxes, and bring back the good old brown cardboard.
5th) Rise the price of trash bags (through a special tax) to 2 dollars per bag. That'll keep people happily re-using all of those plastic bags they get every time they buy something to take out their trash.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
You stick it to the "slimy city council" by recycling, which is what they wanted you to do anyway. Why not just vote them out?? From your perspective they should actually be good guys, not slimy.
Beer drinkers must know..
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Your logic escapes me. For many cities, that would lead to higher costs because of the expense of sending waste to landfill vs selling recyclables, so residents would still end up paying more in taxes or fees.
.sig withheld by request
Seriously, I recycle for three reasons. I like my city selling the stuff and almost breaking even on picking it up.
Are they actually 'almost breaking even', or are they subsidizing it from elsewhere? That happens a lot.
I don't read AC A human right
Mostly because it is.
Seriously, they are about as unbiased on some topics (environment being one of the big ones) as Skeletor is regarding He-Man, and their idea of being fair is that they are completely open about being biased.
As if saying you are biased somehow "fixes" your cognitive bias and makes right of your faulty logic.
Also, books could be written and movies could be made about them cherry picking the worst samples and presenting them as norm so as to achieve a greater "look at the crazy person" effect.
And that is about as "fair" as presenting Charles Manson as a prime example of an American.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It sounds like they have a similar setup to what we have. The city provides two bins, one for garbage and one for recycling. The recycle bin is the larger of the two. The rules are the lids on the bins have to be closed, they have to be facing the right way (the truck picks them up with a hydraulic arm), and they have to be 5 ft apart and away from other objects like mailboxes. The only incentive to recycle is if you would end up with more trash than could fit in the trash can, which results in none of it getting picked up and you have to bring it yourself. It's pretty easy to see the houses that always have the trash bin overflowing and the recycle bin not out.
As in... smart trash cans that scan a bar code as you throw away an item, and automatically distribute it into the proper garbage chamber based on the identification of the item being thrown away.
I have come to believe that the recycling concept is just a ploy to make middle-class white people feel good without actually doing anything good. It is a perfect example of 'greenwash', i.e. brainwashing yourself with ecological fantasies.
Recycling depends on cheap energy, especially cheap diesel fuel. It is common to have three times as many giant garbage trucks driving around in the early morning hours in areas where recycling ordinances are enforced. One truck for the plastic only; one for the cardboard; and one for the degradable organic garbage. Bureaucrats love this as they get to allocate three times as many garbage-collection contracts to their supporters, while claiming to be 'ecologically responsible'.
But all these extra garbage trucks are driving around making noise and getting only about 7 miles to a gallon of diesel fuel. An aside: I live next to a popular restaurant in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Portland, Oregon (the greenwash capital of the world). Every goddam morning there are three huge garbage trucks pulling into the alley next to my apartment to service the recycle dumpsters. One for plastic and glass, one for cardboard, and one for 'garbage'. Three times as much noise and diesel use as necessary to do 'waste management' intelligently.
I contend that the amount of extra energy consumed in diesel fuel for extra sets of garbage trucks exceeds the amount of energy saved by recycling all this garbage. Especially since most of the 'recyclable' garbage gets mixed back together in the landfill anyway if there is no active market for the presorted garbage type.
It will be interesting to see how long this recycling madness continues when the price of diesel fuel goes above $6 a gallon and the cost of having three sets of garbage trucks exceeds the amount that people are willing to pay for 'waste management'.
If white people (and yes, it is only white people who get 'greenwashed' by this recycling idea) were actually serious about recycling, then they would demand that the grocery stores not create so much garbage in the first place. They would demand that food be offered for sale in reusable containers, along with other realistic methods of serious waste management. But when was the last time that middle-class white people were ever serious about something important?!?
Around here, you can be cited or fined for going through someone's trash. If you are caught sifting through a recycle bin you are fined, because that is considered "stealing" income from recycling company(still Waste Management afaik)
Hey, it's your choice. You could vote in favor of higher taxes (or disposal fees) to cover the cost of hiring trash sorters.
Since I *did* vote for that and didn't get it, how can you call it "my choice." Sounds like it's *your* choice, not mine. Democracy in action.
The article does not say that they go through every trash can and pick out the recyclables. And, if it costs $100 per can to do, then that is "prohibitively expensive".
There is no landfill crisis as the GPs P&T video shows.
Really? You are using Penn Teller as a primary source? In the big cities, landfill space is becoming an issue. You can always take it further out to dump it, but that is more expensive. So, in some places that makes recycling cost effective.
This is complete bullshit, just because an area is used for landfill doesn't mean it becomes an arid wasteland that it useless for the next 100 years. You can still use it, build on it, just like any other land.
No. You can make it into a park, but you cannot build any significant buildings on it. The garbage shrinks as it decomposes, so over time any building on it would have its foundations undermined.
If it were popular the article wouldn't be about people being fined for not doing it.
Oh, come on. That is one of the worst arguments I have heard in a while. What percent of people have to approve of something to be "popular"? Does that mean 100% of people approve? 80%? How about over 50%? At 80% (which I would consider to be pretty popular) that still leaves 1 in 5 people that would have to be motivated by other means to get them to participate.
It's cheapest to dump my waste mercury in the ground on my property. If I'm you're neighbor, and you happen to have a well that you drink from, surely you support my God given right to do this without government interference.
This is complete bullshit, just because an area is used for landfill doesn't mean it becomes an arid wasteland that it useless for the next 100 years. You can still use it, build on it, just like any other land.
No, that is complete bullshit. You cannot build directly on a landfill because the landfill outgasses. You have to wait a number of years before the landfill decays. The only thing you can safely do to a completed landfill is make a park on it.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
by using reusable packaging, not taking plastic bags but bringing own reusable ones, not use small packages of potatoes but buy 50kg at the farm one time per year and store them correctly, buy only fresh food from the market without a lot of packaging, somebody will inspect my garbage can regularly because my bag with recycle waste is not getting full enough? Will it the report me as a terrorist or something?
That sounds weird. (i appreciate recycling very much. But i am not a friend of anybody checking if i am within "normal" parameters).
And June Cleaver always had dinner ready for your dad when he got home from work. What exactly were you and Ward doing in the study anyway?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I like to think I'm pretty good about recycling. It takes a decent amount of work, separating, washing empty bottles and cans so they don't stink up the garage, crushing, tearing down boxes, etc. I'm happy to do all of that, but I wouldn't be surprised if more than 10% of what ends up in my trash bin is recyclable. Accidents happen, sometimes I miss things, and every now and then I get lazy. Don't fine me for slipping up every now and then.
Why software? Software doesn't take up space in a landfill.
Anyways, how would you propose enforcing that for free software?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Government isn't passing the onus onto you, they are trying to prevent you from passing the onus onto everyone else, and at a much higher cost, by mixing.
Well, if you're going to take it a step backwards (perfectly logical, it makes sense), then why not go even further and say the onus of sorting this stuff is being passed on to us by the corporations that sell everything with an excessive amount of packaging?
I know I'm not the only one that despises the hard plastic packages used for many small products. Someone here at work decided that we needed to buy a bunch of flash drives, and proceeded to not only waste money buying them from Best Buy at an absurd markup, but now someone has to spend an hour just taking them out of the packages without slicing their hand open. Man, I hate those damn packages!
And the packaging for food is just as bad. It is absurd how much crap is wrapped around food, though it does seem to be improving.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
I am eager for pro-recyclers to give good reasons for recycling, but other than metal recycling
OK... I'll take you up on that.
It doesn't save trees because all paper products in the US come from trees harvested from tree farms where the trees are specifically planted so they can be harvested. Reduce the need for new paper and we reduce the number of trees that are be planted. (There are more trees in the US now than there were before the industrial revolution).
Is paper consumption in the US going up or down? If it goes up, then that means that more tree farms have to be created. Which probably means clear cutting a forest first. Also, if less paper is used then less tree farms would be needed. Net result... more forests.
It doesn't save oil because plastic is made from oil AFTER it has been processed for fuel/lubricants/etc... In other words, if we stopped all plastic manufacturing today, we would have an enormous amount of unused crude oil.
Not true. You can "crack" the heavier molecules (used to make plastic) into lighter ones (used for fuels and such). It is a process which takes energy (so the refineries would rather sell the plastic), but if there was no market for plastic, then the heavier oil molecules would not be wasted.
Second, the article claims that recycling would reduce energy consumption. Well, long story short, it doesn't except for minerals recycling. Because paper and plastic have already been processed, they have to go through a somewhat complex de-processing in order to be used in making new paper/plastic products. It is not a simple process of grind it up, melt it down, make new stuff. There are lots of chemicals that are used at each stage for various purposes and unless those chemicals are purged, it makes the new product inferior.
Do you have a source for that? I agree that recycling is not a simple process. But neither is making it from scratch. I have not seen a reputable study that says that the recycling process actually takes more energy than making it from scratch. I am sure there are some cases where it is true (it is probably not worth it to recycle if you live right next to a refinery), but is the difference in cost so much that it is always the case for all economic conditions?
In addition, clear-cutting has been shown to actually be a benefit to the environment, since it reduces the likelihood of forest fires (nature's form of clear-cutting) and it gives the ground time to recuperate the minerals and nutrients that trees consume.
I have to completely disagree with you here. For one, controlled burns are the best way to control forest fires. This burns out all of the underbrush which does put nutrients back in the soil. But, usually the older trees survive, so there is still something holding the soil in place. But, if you clear cut, then there is nothing to hold the soil in place so you lose a lot of topsoil to erosion (which has most of the nutrients). You are also carting off most of the nutrients that got pulled out of the soil (the trees) and taking them to a paper mill.
, a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables.
I was under the impression that sifting through someone's trash, at least before it gets combined with other people's trash, is illegal in most states. Like dumpster diving behind a competitor's corporate office looking for useful information. Also, my university had painted signs on their dumpsters saying something along the lines that the contents were the property of the university and looking through it would be trespassing, and I had heard they were backed up by Maine law.
All that's happening there is that you end up paying workers later on to resort the materials. It's better than trying to have the consumers do it all, and it's better than trying to sort recyclables out of trash, but it's still expensive and often dirty.
I don't read AC A human right
There are incentive programs like recyclebank, but as you note government tends to favor force over civility.
I expect there's no legal requirement to actually put out recyclables every so many days, but only that your regular trash may not consist of more than 10% recyclables, right? If so, what I'd do in that position -- purely out of spite -- is to do my own recycling, thus preventing the city from making money on my recyclables (and on the effort it takes for me to separate my trash) while the city gets to waste money on checking trash bags that never contain any recyclables.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
You must mean back when they littered more than they do now. Public trash cans appeared in the early part of the 20th century mainly because of all the banana peels that were getting littered around. With the much sturdier Gross Michael bananas of the time, stepping and slipping on them really was a problem which is why they ended up being displayed in so many cartoons.
Graffiti has been found on the great pyramids, put their by the builders, and period reports state that Imperial Rome was covered in it. Even when non-literate, the population would put up pictures. For that matter, the heyday of American graffiti was in the 70's (but at that point one must talk about street art versus graffiti, or rather discussion with anybody who cares enough to know actual knowledge about it through history will trend that way).
And they walked up hill both ways to do it too.
You might be beginning to have a point here and in the rest of your post, however, your imaginary nostalgia for the past probably has most people dismissing you by this point. Community spirit and support for such things is all fine and good, but then you have a locally biased upholding so such rules. Metropolitan police only date back to the Victorian era (~1855) in London and then later in NYC. Before then it was all the sheriff and local citizens. While their creation probably did lead to less involvement by local citizens in law enforcement affairs, the general consensus in the histories I have read say that it resulted in a more uniform upholding of those laws. The rich and powerful may have lots of clout now with law enforcement, but they had even more back when the only people who could do anything about it were their employees.
I don't know how Cleavland does it, here in the SF Bay Area, recycling rules vary from town to town and what is accepted is often very unclear. If they are going to fine people for not recycling, they are going to make the determination very simple and keep their customers informed.
...because it was only a week or two ago. Depending on the day, they are worth between $1.55 to $1.85 a pound at my local scrap recycling company. They pay for plastic & glass too (even non-redemption glass is worth half a cent per pound). It was my understanding that this was the norm (at least in the U.S.). Where is it that you have to pay to recycle? What gave you the impression that you could no longer recycle aluminum cans by the pound for money?
Knowledge != Intelligence
> I could travel back in time, the first thing I would do is buy as many water rights in Colorado as I possibly could.
How about restricting how much water is taken from the river - and appropriately distributing what is available? Rivers, like any other finite system, need management. Then there wouldn't be a problem with retaining rainwater....
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
Such a big deal? It's garbage... you separate recyclables, you put it in a bin, someone collects it. The end.
Why are people bringing up the constitution? Seriously.
You guys really need to get over such fucking petty squabbles about every single issue. Learn to accept the government can't please everyone and the same time...
Its just you people being incompetent (or just inventing a handy excuse) - it works very well here in Europ.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Just have someone go out with the thing each day and throw the trash over the fence to the neighbor.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
That's not a solution, because the cost in implementing all that stuff is larger than the benefit of increased recycling.
1st) Glass bottles are dangerous, they can break, people, esp kids, can hurt themselves.
Hard plastic bottles are expensive, require more materials to produce. Soft plastic is preferred.
They won't be re-used anyways, unless the consumer recycles the bottles -- so this doesn't buy anything.
2nd) More packaging increases the ability to sell. Packaging also protects the product against damage before it's sold. If you limit the amount of packaging, more units have to be thrown away because they were damaged before the consumer got their product.
3rd) The burden of providing a 5yr warranty is excessively high, and prevents many products from existing in the 1st place. The cost of this to commerce and technological advancement is much higher than a simple price increase. Any politician to consider something such as this should be thrown out of office and made to live on the street, immediately.
4th) People like pretty boxes. If the population was in favor of demanding recyclable packaging, they would buy products packaged that way.
5th) "Grocery" bags are cheap bags and not suitable for taking out trash with.
6th) The population would never go for it, because they are bad ideas that would be a net harm to society. Politicians pushing for them would get voted out. That's how democracy works.
The biggest problem with recycling plastics is the missing economy of scale. Everything for virgin plastic has been optimized to hell over the last 100 years or so. The processes for re-processing post-consumer plastic waste are AFAIK about where plastics were in the 1920s, as far as energetic efficiency goes. No citation for that, it's something that an engineer who works in PET reprocessing told me.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I'm not saying I agree with the idea of having someone go through your trash to make sure you're being a good environmentally-conscious citizen...
But is it really so hard to separate your recycling? Are people really in such a hurry that they can't be bothered to do anything but throw everything in the same garbage can? If you have an empty plastic bottle, it goes in the plastic bin. If you have an empty glass bottle or jar, it goes in the glass bin. That cereal box? Flatten it and put it in the cardboard bin. I mean, seriously. Why is that hard?
I'm a lazy bastard who always looks for the easy way to do things and I have no problem with my recycling.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
what's stopping someone from 1) just hiding the rfid next to the curb so it always thinks your recycle container is out or 2) tamper with your annoying neighbor to give them a $100 fine?
Somebody needs to publish a good instructive leaflet showing where to drill on these trash containers to wipe out the electronics. It's probably one little spot somewhere, and a dude in each neighborhood with a cordless drill could rid the city of this bullshit in a few hours.
I think you're onto something.
Re 1: I'm all for it as long as it's shown that the cost of transporting the bottles back to the bottling company won't exceed the cost of transporting them onto the landfill + the cost of making replacement bottles. This requires some thought put into the collection system.
Re 2: Yay!
Re 3: Software: I disagree, it's too hard to enforce. Hardware: all for it. Higher priced but longer-lasting hardware may well open up markets for leaner software.
Re 4: Double yay! Especially those clear plastic overwraps, with thermowelded seames, that seem indestructible. Recently I've bought a pair of scissors packaged like that. Couldn't get to the damn thing without a sharp tool of some kind.
Re 5: Not only people will reuse those pesky plastic grocery bags that way, this will also encourage people to have small kitchen garbage cans. In the U.S. it's quite popular to have enormous garbage cans in the kitchen. They are often marketed with indications as to how tightly they close, so that your kitchen doesn't smell like a city dump. I'm always looking at it and thinking: maybe, just maybe, you should use 5x smaller garbage bags and take the trash out more often so that it doesn't smell like, you know, garbage? Sigh...
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
In Washington, all water belongs to the public. Anyone appropriating water in the state must have the proper water claim, right and/or certificate before using water (legally). Certain uses are exempted from the need to acquire a certificate (very difficult), such as groundwater use under 5000 gallons a day (wells). As there was no provision in law for the collection of rain water without a certificate or preexisting water claim or right, it was by definition illegal. While it may seem absurd, the difference between a rain barrel and a reservoir is a pretty fine line on a large enough scale. Considering that much of the state is arid, relies on rainfall and has more water rights/claims/certificates allocated than water available, stating otherwise would have created a legal nightmare.
Thank you.
Re: Re 1: It was done for ages. Here in Argentina it is currently done for Beer bottles, massively. Coke used to do it. You return the bottles to any store, and they are brought back in the same truck that brings the new filled bottles to the store. Those trucks return empty to the distribution center anyway, may as well return with a cargo.
Re: Re 3: It's not that hard to enforce for software. Everytime microsoft makes a new version, people throw away computers massively. Just let them know that if their new version doesn't run reasonably well on 5 years old hardware, they'll get a huge extra tax.
Re: Re 5: I take out my garbage every day, in the same shitty bags the supermarket gives me.
And, don't get me wrong, I'm no tree-hugger. It's just that where I live (Argentina) we still maintain a more natural life. We do not buy that much plastic and shit, and not all of our food comes packaged. 70% of our food is meat and vegetables, and you just go to a "carniceria" to buy meat, or to a "verduleria" to buy vegetables (those stores might be within a supermarket or not), and you mostly eat natural food. The meat is cut right in front of you, and it's usually from a recently killed animal. You buy fresh vegetables that are produced nearby (most cities are surrounded by production areas).
That cuts down on packaging and other crap at least 50% (comparing to other places where bubble wrapped tomatoes and well-packaged, ready-to-serve burgers seem to be the norm). Here, you can get the shitty plastic coca cola bottles, but you can also get the hard-plastic recyclable ones (at some stores only, not that widespread). Beer certainly uses recyclable bottles, and you actually bring your old bottle to the store to get the new one, otherwise you get charged the cost of the extra bottle. It's really not that hard. 90% of the trash we produce every day wasn't produced 100 years ago. We just need to cut the shit and go back to more natural ways of doing things (without necessarily affecting our quality of life, or going back to the stone age as many people would imply). Most of the things we do, we do unnecessarily. For example, I have never, ever bought food for my dog. We just overcook and he eats whatever we eat. He is 16 years old and awesomely healthy. During the last 50 years we have been cheated into buying a lot of bubble wrapped crap that we don't really need, and when you look back and realize that you actually live better without microwave dinners and plastic wrapped convenient shit, you start wondering just why are we doing things like this lately.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Re 1st) We currently do this in Argentina for beer bottles. It was done for every single bottle, including Coca Cola bottles until the 80's. It worked just fine. It's simple: people need to bring an empty bottle to get a new full bottle, otherwise they get charged extra. The same trucks that deliver new bottles take the empty ones back instead of just returning empty to the distribution center. The bottles are washed and reused. Come on, this was just done massively only 20 years ago. Have we really forgotten? If stupid kids hurt themselves, I am a happy guy. Evolution works.
2nd) 4th) 6th) People is stupid is not a good excuse. That is the very same thing that brought us here, and that's what we are trying to fix.
3rd) I take out my trash in supermarket bags every single day. I just use two of them. Ain't that hard.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Software doesn't take up space in a landfill, but all the computers that people throw away every time that microsoft publishes a new windows version that doesn't run in less than a CRAY, does.
First, I didn't propose "enforcing" any of this things. Just incentively them through a simple reward/punish scheme. If you comply with this rules, you get tax reductions. If you don't, you pay extra taxes.
This doesn't affect Free Software at all since:
a) Free operating systems usually run better and faster on older hardware across more platforms.
b) It's not sold, and therefore no taxes are paid.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
The trash and recycling get picked up at the same time, and as I said we pay per bag for the trash. The city has a contract to sell all the recyclables to a single company, and from the public records they are coming fairly close. The combined pickup does lose a small amount of money, but it's much cheaper for me to pay $1 a week for trash and subsidize recycling through our low property taxes or our sales taxes than to pay $20 a month for trash pickup to a private company like people must in some towns around here.
Lebron James left. Relevant video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysmLA5TqbIY :P
So if I'm reading this right, they don't go through your own trash can unless your recycle can is empty. I suspect you'll see people in the middle of the night rifling neighbor's recycle containers to plump up their own. Or they'll take cardbox boxes home from work to dump in their containers. Or, they'll just swap containers in the middle of the night. Who'd know?
We don't have that kind of thing in our neighborhood, but we do have a rule that if the lid on the trash can does not completely seal with the can, in other words, if the trash is higher than the lid of the can, you get charged $5 more for that week.
Cue people in the middle of the night taking a bag out of their can and putting it in their neighbor's.
A guy down the street got caught distributing his garbage across several cans. He'd do it well after midnight, but we have a sheriff deputy on our street that works the late shift.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Freedomworks was the corporate shill for the tea party movement. Beware of anybody that links to them.
--Sam
So Cleveland residents have to pay for trash collection in their water/sewage/etc bills every month, then, if they don't separate the items the trash collection company can get paid for instead of having to pay to dispose of, the residents get fined? Why doesn't the trash company just pay people to pull the recyclables out of the trash back at the base?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Any trash supervisor can search my trash can if they want to. I just don't know if it's worth it - two big labradors generate a fair amount of dog shit, and that is the last thing in the can before trash day.
supervisor will go through your can looking for recyclables. From the article: "Trash carts containing more than 10 percent recyclable material could lead to a $100 fine,
so if you're not mixing recyclables with the waste, you won't get fined.
When this comes to California (not if - this is the land of idiotic busy bodies) I'm going to bag up my trash and dump it at work. Let the trash spetsnaz ponder empty cans.
Taking into account the feedback people have already given you, what you state is not clear cut and not without counter-arguments.
However, you entirely miss one big point of recycling: reducing landfill. Landfill is an incredibly wasteful, environmentally damaging (even in the short term - public health, habitats, aesthetically, even the smell it creates!) practice that should be avoided where it is possible to reuse rather than throw.
In places like the UK, there is simply not enough space outside of habitation or areas of natural beauty to landfill forever.
This should be re-categorized as your rights online, you insensitive clod!
This is the most big brother, money grabbing, the government is watching you article ive ever read?
And its under "news"???!?!?!
My general purpose city-supplied and emptied (weekly) wheeled bin was made in 1983. There are some signs of wear and tear, but no cracks or signs of imminent failure.
Good! Its about time we started getting some productivity out of the tax money spent on incarceration. Maybe they should turn some of the higher security prisons into enclosed recycling centers and make the inmates process and refine recyclables on site. Surely it could make enough money to at least pay for some of the food and medical spent on the inmates.
I know of course about glass bottle reuse -- it's not recycling, and that's the key here. The bottles go through a rinse cycle, and then are re-labeled if they had paper labels to begin with, then they are checked for neck integrity, they get filled, capped, and off they go again. This process is not very different from dealing with new bottles, save for the amount of rinsing necessary, and possible inspection. The latter can be quite involved, and even them I'm always wary of "pranksters" (vandals, really) who think it'd be cool to superglue something to the inside of the bottle.
I also use the supermarket bags for garbage. Works wonderfully.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Eco-Nazis are now forcing people to do the work of the recyclers for them. The recyclers make money on this and the more they can force the population to do their work of sorting and cleaning the trash the more money they make. Here we have multiple containers and they send around two different trucks one for the recyclables and another for trash. Its a big waste of money and of our time. However the Eco-Profiteers use the power of government to force people to provide them free labor under the threat of force (fining you). This kind of BS is immoral and un-American. If it makes economic sense to reclaim and recycle you do not have to force people to do it. It was not economical to grow certain crops unless you could use slave labor. Now we have a whole range of uneconomical technologies like bio-fuels, solar power, electric cars, recycling that require a politically correct form of slavery (government subsidies) to work. I believe in great technologies like solar and wind and even bio-fuels. Eventually these technologies will be more cost effective and they will replace all current forms of energy today. Just like at some time in the future recycling will make economic sense and will replace the current burn/bury and forget systems. If you want to use a more expensive technology to solve a problem that is your choice just don't use the power of Government Force to make the rest of us pay for it.
So what's stopping a person from just putting a glass jar or two into the near-empty recycling bin and putting it on the curb every week just so the city guys don't come inspecting his trash? Will there be a minimum quota to be respected? What if you don't generate ENOUGH recyclable trash, will you be considered a non-litterbug and fined for not respecting the consumerism laws?
We have the same set up in our town. Free recycling, $2 garbage stickers.
Last year the price went up to $2.50 a sticker. Why? They said that people recycled too much. The trash load went down significantly, and so they sold a lot less stickers. The tipping fees to the town were apparently a fixed price for some fixed limit, but the reduced trash load did not qualify for a cheaper contract or whatever. As the sticker count went down, the funding account didn't fill up as fast enough. So, the price had to go up!
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
That seems to be a pretty good argument in favor of what they are doing in TFA. If they increase the rate of recycling, then it should get cheaper as the economies of scale become evident. Also, if it is an immature technology, then it should get more efficient over time as it matures.
I suspect that rain water collection systems are being considered the equivalent of upstream dams when it comes to watershed management. When you are dealing with water rights, and recharge areas, blocking the flow of water to a stream that someone downstream uses can be a big issue.
So, if a person buys their food from bulk bins and reduces their waste further by being into cooking their food from scratch thereby reducing their recyclables to a minimum, does that mean they are going to be forcing the city to routinely pick through their smelly trash for no reward? :)
We have consumer pre-sort in Minneapolis for recyclables (as opposed to single-stream for every other municipality that I'm aware of) and the bad news is that it cuts participation, at least at my household. I don't have the room for seperate containers for clear glass, colored glass, plastic, aluminum, steel and newspaper.
So I don't bother with anything but newspaper and cardboard, but primarily because those items are a hassle in my trash due to their volume. The rest I just toss in the trash and I'm not the only one I know with the same philosophy.
I definitely would recycle more if it was single stream because it would be so easy and less of a burden. I can't help but think that consumer pre-sort is just environmentalist genuflection to their green religion as it adds a fairly negligible benefit.
As it happens, I have a client with a waste-to-energy plant, built in the early 80s. The plant takes consumer household waste and creates a low-tech fuel that's burned in electric power stations. They have an automated sorting system that works pretty well and given the plant's age and relatively old technology, I can only assume that modern sort systems for recycling work much better.
Higher costs on the order of $50/ton. Compare that to a $100 fine for throwing away a few ounces of recyclable material. Government should be working FOR us, not against us! If people think that $50/ton is worth less than the value of the time it takes every person to separate their trash, that's their decision and the government should honor it.
Software can take up space in a landfill if it comes in a box, on CD or DVD. Odds are the box is chipboard rather than corrugated cardboard. In my area, corrugated cardboard is a recyclable but chipboard isn't. (At least the last time I checked.) Then you have to figure out what to do with the old CDs and DVDs. I haven't seen many places that recycle them, and there are a limited number of craft oriented things that use them.
It isn't the government's responsibility at all. It is people like you that think that GOVERNMENT is the solution to most problems that drives me nuts. Especially if you're an American. Please read the first paragraph of the US Constitution. FYI, it starts out "We the People". We, the people, the citizens, are the government, it IS our responsibility.
Take responsibility for yourself damn it. Stop expecting the "Government" to do for you, what you're too lazy or stupid to do for yourself.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You live in a country that actually values its citizens. Here in the US, you better have a health insurance card in your wallet, or the paramedics will just mark your ass as "coded" as opposed to bother to try to resuscitate you should something happen. You live in the safest, richest, most peaceful nation on earth, and are bitching about how home hillbillies get paid? You don't know how lucky you have it where you are not having to deal everyday with someone coming into a cafe, pulling out two high capacity pistols and mowing down everybody in the restaurant on a daily basis. Or find that a discarded joint got stuck to your tire of your car, and are now facing a life prison sentence for that.
Well, that's all true, but comparisons are meaningless, really; I only visit the US for the lobster in Maine, and I buy travel health insurance before I leave.
I also don't live in Saudi Arabia where they'd cut off my hand and stone my ol' lady if I put the glass where the plastic should go. Or Somalia, where they'll kill you for supporting a soccer team. Hmm. Now that I think about it ...
Doh.
2 & 5 cover the box/wrapping issue.
CDs/DVDs are not an issue because they are small enough, and you rarely throw away old software, it's small enough to keep. Anyway, if it becomes an issue, we have the internet to fix that (again, tax the hell out of boxed software and promote downloads).
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Actually, I've been in a plant that reuses bottles (customer of mine). The process is the same, since all bottles, new or used are sterilized at high temperatures, washed, and checked for defects. It literally costs nothing. And for those that don't bother recycling, or when you want to buy a bottle and you don't have an empty bottle, you just pay the price, and the bottle gets recycled anyway (basically, since those bottles are well paid, people will pick them up in the streets and allow them to follow their natural cycle, just like with cardboard or aluminum).
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Puh-lese. Littering is MUCH less prevalent than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
Not where I live. Not by a long shot.
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
Puh-lese. Littering is MUCH less prevalent than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Remember the PSA they used to run on TV with the crying Indian? I do, and I remember how much worse the litter used to be back in those days.
Don't get me wrong. There are still an awful lot of slobs out there who litter. But from what I see in the areas I travel the problem is better than in the "good old days."
We should check to see when all the public service actions got added to the legal pile. i.e. when did a speeding ticket change from a fine to a fine plus public service hours.
What I do not know is if those poor folk with orange vests and orange trash bags are making a big difference or if they are going home resolved to not litter. Either way I suspect "public service" is the key to the current cleaner streets.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Are you referring to Listowel? and how all businesses have to lock their dumpsters now. and the people that use orange stickers to fake the tags. not to mention the illegal dumping.
No, not Listowell, but all smaller communities have the same problems. Restaurants etc. lock their dumpsters here. People don't want to pay dump fees, so they go out to Nowhere Lane and drop stuff off. Or they keep it in a corner of their back yards until the neighbors complain.
I haven't heard of a problem with fake bag tags here, yet, although The Idea has occurred to me: how hard could it be to have several thousand printed up in Montreal when I'm there?. The WM guys check the tags a bit -- you wouldn't get away with any old blue sticker.
Doh.
Conversely, if people, through their elected officials, support the opposite view, we should respect that.
.sig withheld by request
A couple of points. There has been some landfilling of recyclables recently because of the economic downturn. That however doesn't mean throw out the ideas of recycling and reuse. We need to couple mandates to recycle with mandates to use recyclables, create new schemes for reuse, and manage consumption of problematic materials through taxation.
Also the quality and ease of recycling needs to be addressed. Identifying the materials in a container is often difficult and should be addressed, and standards for beverage containers need to be such that the market for those materials can be consistently high value.