When Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev came back from his trip to the United States he had the answer to all of the USSR’s agricultural and other problems – corn. A directive was issued and pretty soon corn was being planted everywhere with joyous reports pouring in from all corners of the country even from places where corn had no chance of maturing due to the short growing season. Just like in the Special Olympics it wasn’t the results that counted, people got points (and awards) for participation.
I thought about overachieving and stupidity when I came home the other day to see my neighborhood lined with blue trash carts.
With these trash carts the City of Olathe is about to start its recycling program. I am skeptical about the benefits of recycling and until now did not participate in the program since it was not mandatory and cost an additional charge. My household doesn’t produce enough recyclable materials as outlined by the City to even bother. As a matter of fact we just don’t have that much trash in general. When the City supplied everyone with 95 gallon trash carts few years ago I immediately traded down to a smaller 65 gallon size and even that is almost always half-empty. I hardly ever have any items that fit the description other than an occasional phone book, a rare plastic bottle, or a piece of cardboard, so the 65 gallon cart represents about 65 times more volume of recyclables my family can produce in a year. The City did a test-run and feels that I will have enough stuff to fill it every two weeks. Obviously this is not going to happen.
In addition to the fact that I never volunteered to participate and wasn’t consulted with before the cart was dropped off in my driveway I literally don’t have any room in my garage to keep two 65 gallon containers. Hardly anyone in this neighborhood has more than one-car garage and most of the people already keep their regular trash carts out on the street (against the regulations), so now it will be adorned by two giant trash bins per household. However, the main non-benefit of the recycling program is a mandatory increase in the cost of the trash pick-up. While no one has to participate, everyone has to pay supposedly to attain a “long‐term stabilizing benefit to recycling because landfill costs are increasing”. Now I am torn between wanting to get something for the money I suddenly have to contribute and the realization that I will probably never have enough recyclables to even bother rolling the cart out on the pick-up day. Most likely I will just return the cart and curse the City every time I pay the bill.
I realize that many people believe in recycling, Jesus Christ, hope and change, world peace and global warming/cooling or both. Nothing wrong with that. What I find idiotic is the city investing in enough of the $65 trash-carts for every house, special trucks and equipment, with many people like me who will opt out of the program for various reasons. I have no idea how many people will return the carts or just leave them outside as decorations. The time will tell. I wouldn’t have any problem with just a price increase without the recycling gimmick, I realize that the costs are rising, but what may be a good idea for some, was imposed on all by the same type of thoughtless overachievers who long ago were planting corn inside the Arctic circle.
In the meantime you are welcome to drop off your recycling at my house – it’s already paid for.
If you have thirty minutes of spare time, watch this episode of Penn and Teller Bullshit, maybe you’ll recognize yourself.
And, you’ll have people digging through your recycle bin for the cash value of the bottles and cans. So, you pay (at least we do in California) for the deposit for the bottle/can, then the bottle is taken out of the bin, the bin that you’re paying extra for every month. You would think the Mafia runs the trash buisness. Oh, wait, they usually do.
We do recycle, in part because it’s really easy for us to do so. I don’t know how much recycling helps, but I figure it certainly doesn’t hurt.
We have a small green bin. It doesn’t take up much space. I have no idea who the hell produces enough recyclables to fill one of those beastly blue bins you’ve got in Olathe.
they have to make them this big so the truck can pick them up without the driver getting out
My lovely blue cart was delivered yesterday…it is still sitting at the end of my driveway. I have been paying for recycling for the last 2 or 3 years because I had a roommate that wanted it and I was too lazy to cancel when she moved out.
I tried to recycle some cardboard once and they left it all and told me I could not recycle cardboard streetside. Maybe they have changed their policy…but they wouldn’t even accept all recyclable products in their bins when I actually did attempt to recycle.
I agree with you, there is no good place to store all of the bins that they keep dumping on us. Soon it will be one for paper, one for plastic, one for glass (when they decide Ripple can’t be the only game in town for that), etc.
to the last commenter, fast forward through the video to where they line up 6-8 color-coded carts including one for “slightly soiled toilet paper” and people still take it without flinching
They won’t take cats either.
I’m like you Meesha. I got my blue cart and I’m wondering how the hell I’m ever going fill it. Most of the cardboard I get is in the form of pizza boxes, which they won’t take. They’ll take cans, but not glass bottles. I just don’t use that many plastic bottles. I’ll probably be filling this blue beast and putting it out to the street once a year.
The problem with a lot of the policies enacted by governments at every level is that there are always unintended consequences that can’t be planned for. The perfect example here is, I worry that if I begin recycling all of my recyclables, there won’t be enough bulk material left to fill up the landfills.
Think about that people. Do we really want a bunch of empty holes in the ground? That land isn’t going to fill itself you know.
Just wait till we are forced to buy those g-d mercury filled light bulbs that are a hazardous waste. Mark my word they will end up in the trash, probably the recycle bin.
suburban recycling is funny this way. where my mother lives (st. louis), people get to “choose” their trash pick-up company, which each have their own bin systems … trash, recycling and sometimes a whole other one for yard waste. the “best” part is that you get at best three diesel trucks coming to your subdivision per week … multiply that by companies, and it’s pretty much at least one truck per day. now THAT’s environmentally sound!
kcmo’s bins are welcomed here, but they do require a human to get out and pick it up and dump in a truck (no glass). kcmo has recently added pizza boxes and plastics 5 and 6.
our bins are only $10. but, the city does have some places where regular trash carts have been piloted; and those are $65. it’s a good racket! : )
meesha, it’s amazing but not surprising that you manage to live a life free of all the consumer packaging that most of us put up with when buying food products. your cooking posts have shown as much. i wish i could be more at-home / old fashioned with food, too.
indeed, if we gave up canned soda, deli meat from non-deli counter, cous cous and such that comes in boxes with seasoning, canned tomatoes and soups, etc. — in other words, all the stuff one can pretty much fix on one’s own without processed food plants’ getting involved — we’d have very little recycling, too. convenience equals trash. but there’s no way i’m cooking up my own vegetable broth or making soymilk myself …
the main trash i find that’s hard to deal with / always landfill-bound, is plastic bags, plastic outer wrappings on things, plastic inner wrappings (like in biscuit mix or cereal boxes or the bags frozen veggies come in — again, all things that are easily eliminated / didn’t enter US diet until after 1950 …). i know you can get reusable produce bags, at least.
but “bin taxation without representation … ”
seems like your neighborhood would have been fine with a big bin at the end of a street and little bins for the households to keep inside and then dump from their cars to the big big when commuting out.
For the record, they didn’t charge us for carts, they just raised the charges. There are 2 people here,how much trash can we possibly produce. We exchange milk bottles at the store, other packaging is negligible.
Yeah, but you have to know that especially in a city like Olathe, your household is the exception, and not the rule, right? I know that my father’s house in CA only has 2 small (now 1) old people living in it, and they somehow manage to fill their trashcan AND their recyclable can (which are both of the 65 gallon variety) every week, give or take a week now and then. When they have family visiting? We overflow those suckers in a couple of days.
At my house here in KS, its different. Leo and I can halfway fill our large trash can on a weekly basis, and are able to contain our recyclables to fit the back of his hyundai once a month for the trip down to the center in south OP. I can’t imagine just how the hell my dad and step mom manage to create so much trash on their own, but they do eat a lotta lean cuisines, and stuff. I guess it just adds up!
We’ve got one of those gigantic blue bins here in Northern California. It’s standard, along with the normal trash bin and the yard waste bin. We completely top of the recycling bin about three times a month, though we don’t compress the contents or anything. Newspapers, junk mail, gallon bottles, and cardboard boxes (from diapers) are the most frequent occupants, along with the plastic bags from the grocery store.
Since they don’t have us sort our stuff into glass, aluminum, and paper into separate bins any more (color-coded milk-crate things), we actually participate now. Some portion of what ends up in my blue bin is doubtless not really appropriate, but I have no illusions that I significantly saving the planet or anything. Really I’m just ever-so-slightly delaying the rampaging debate that will surely fire up when it’s time to open up another landfill in my area. Damned hippies…
We saw that Bullshit episode; I think I netted out the same way they did – meh, it makes us feel better to do it, so we do it, even if we know it doesn’t really help!
Actually, for those of us who don’t have 65-gallon (or larger) bins and are restricted to two bags of trash no matter what, it does help. And unsubscribing from the Star has cut down on the masses of paper we’ve had to haul out to the curb!
Meesha – happy Hanukkah.
That photo reminds me of a movie I saw once… Edward Scissorhands, I think. It took me a moment to put my finger on it: but it seems sort of apropos that a community which has a one-size-fits-all subdivision has a one-size-fits-all approach to waste management. There seems to be a certain amount of symmetry there.
Thanks. I never watched that movie start to finish.For some reason I keep falling asleep.