20 Replies to “It’s Probably Nothing”

  1. What was once true, is no longer so
    In my sleepy suburb of Richmond Hill, we used to be allowed 4 bags of garbage every two weeks. Then they gave us separate bins for paper, tins/jars, and organics, and cut the allowance from four bags to two.
    It was amazingly simple to toss the jars and cans into one bin, throw the newspapers into another, and put the banana peels in the last. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to meet the limit (one bag for me, one for my landlord), but to my surprise, instead of two bags full near to bursting, I take out one bag that’s only half to three-quarters full.
    The chart shows a 45% drop over the last two years in waste cars; that’s about equal to the drop in my city, and we certainly haven’t been in a recession. So there has been a big step function applied, one which I’m sure has been duplicated in many cash-strapped municipalities.
    That doesn’t mean predictions of more trouble in the US are wrong, just that I think qualitative changes have a lot to do with what this chart is showing.

  2. A couple weeks ago, an auto parts wholesaler in Kentucky told me that sales are the same as when the bottom fell out 4 years ago. Hopefully it’s just a blip.

  3. They should use a graph measuring the amount of trash talk and garbage,duplicity,hypocracy,and lies coming out of government agencies,both in the US and Canada.That would show a truer reading of how we,the Jane/Joe Blows, are getting screwed.
    Or would that show to much corruption,with no error bars required?

  4. funny how disguising trash as recycle items makes people think there is less of it.

  5. “funny how disguising trash as recycle items makes people think there is less of it.
    Posted by: old white guy at July 29, 2012 8:15 AM ”
    old white guy…myself,my better half and our next door neighbours where discussing this.Has anybody else noticed how a,say,stove,bought 20 years ago still works,but one bought 5 years ago is now broke?So if we “recycle” the new stove,it ain’t garbage,as in garbage product?

  6. My first thought was exactly what Kevinb said. I know industry is suffering, but a lot of garbage is worth a lot of money these days and doesn’t end up as garbage. We have had a “blue box” and “green bin” program for years now. My cities problem is people stealing “garbage”. The city uses the value of the material they collect in the blue box program to offset the cost. The problem is there are so many people scavenging through the boxes that they are loosing all the good material before they can collect it. Every garbage day you see people going around the city on bikes and with trucks taking material out of the blue boxes. I am sure it is mostly returnable liquor bottles, but not all.

  8. Do yourselves a favor. Instead of tossing pop/beer cans in the bin so others can steal them, save them up and give them to the Shriners. They will pick up and provide bags to keep them in. ALL proceeds go to the building of Children’s Hospitals across North America. (No, I’m not a Shriner).
    As for the rest of the garbage, it should be burned as a method for generating electricity.

  9. That’s a tyelling graph. Uou can even see the rebound due to pent up demand in 2009. The graph warns us of an onset of government statistics being fixed; it is election year in the US and this graph shows Barry’s hopes in the trash can.

  10. I used to put 30 – 40,000 km/year on my truck. Now I’m lucky if it is 20,000. That nasty demographic is starting to kick in. I can afford to put more miles on but not the desire. The young families would like to but cannot afford it. That is the future of consumption in a nutshell.

  11. Recycling initiatives, crappy products (such as appliances) and garbage bag limits aren’t new. They have certainly been around (in many places)since the 2007-2009 drastic drop in that graph. If the current waste trend continues I’d bet that GDP will follow closely again. Not good.

  12. Justthinkin said: “Has anybody else noticed how a,say,stove,bought 20 years ago still works,but one bought 5 years ago is now broke?”
    I have. My three year old stove died under suspicious circumstances, so I took it apart and found… not much of anything inside. Really cheesy construction, no insulation to speak of, small gauge wires. Kind of scary, really.
    So instead of dropping a bunch of money on a new crappy stove I went to the used appliance guy and got me a ten year old Inglis. Which weighs about double what the other one did, cost me less than half. Same power consumption, heat elements haven’t changed in thirty or forty years.
    Does this make me think the dip in garbage hauling is due to recycling? Nope. Gotta haul the recycle too, right? Plus, did everybody get recycling religion that fast? No way.

  15. Here in Morontario….it finally surfaced…after Consumers Glass in Mississayga closed that this sole receiver of recycled glass could only got the recycled glass from a 50km radius…the rest of the province glass went to landfill….because the trucking cost busted the concept of selling the glass.
    About the only viable recyclables are alluminum cans….any one with half a brain crushes, hoards and sells them for cash……
    Steel/Iron has always been the most recyled material….statistically your car may have material that was once a pike wielded by Attilla’s army……….

  16. GDP ( goods and services ) is still being created, people are still getting hired; we, the people are just too dumb to comprehend things like pixie dust, positive thoughts, up twinkles, those kinds of things.
    Barry is doing his best to ( re )educate the people, he just has a long way to go before they realize how good they now have it, and that a second term promises to be better yet.

  17. Christopher Taylor, there’s a time lag in that graph for all the points where the garbage lines acts, the GDP follows. I’m inclined to think that folks have started repairing broken items, or simply going without rather than calling the garbage, recycled stuff. We’ll see how it follows through in this coming quarter / election season.
    B. Hussien lies. And I see doom until next spring of 2013.

  18. Here in Morontario….it finally surfaced…after Consumers Glass in Mississauga closed that this sole receiver of recycled glass could only got the recycled glass from a 50km radius…the rest of the province glass went to landfill….because the trucking cost busted the concept of selling the glass.
    Amused as I am by the term Morontario, this is going on all over the place. It’s going on in the Greater Vancouver area for sure, where various “recyclables” sit in depots for a few months or years until they’re quietly trucked to a landfill, and it’s going on in Washington State in much the same way in spite of regulations and green bloviating. (One aspect of the situation in WA and OR is that landfill is just so cheap down there … you take a large piece of desert with a large Indian reservation and an underused railroad going through it, plus heavy equipment resources for nearby mining, and you’ve got a very economical landfill situation.)

  19. I wish the graph was adjusted for the effect of recycling.
    Of course we are in trouble; anyone who owns stocks or mutual funds knows that almost everything is going down in value.
    In view of all the facts it is hard to deny Obama is working hard on destroying the USA economy ( Cloward Piven strategy ; overwhelm a system until it is so weak that you can replace it with a new one; socialism )
    but as far as that graph is concerned recycling should be factored in, just to be more “exact” for lack of a better word .

  20. Sasquatch and CJ, here in Haldimand county they don’t even pretend to warehouse the recycle. The trucks drive straight to the landfill and dump it right next to the garbage truck.
    Local haulage contractor is making out like a bandit on that deal. Two sets of trucks, one white and one blue, picking up what could be handled by just the white ones.

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