Nothing new here…move on…we got windmills to build!
Hehehe notice there was no mention of removing that portion of property taxes that paid for the original service. Also note that if recycling was actually as viable as these people believe then private companies would be lining up to pay for the privilege of mining the dumps.
gotta love the oh sooooooo calming stinky hippy music in the background.
Makes it all so soothing, so restful.
Soylent Green anyone?
“Soylent Green anyone?”
~Fred
Sure!
And here is some grape Koolaid to wash it down with./
Waste disposal is a CORE infrastructure responsibility of civic government.
Canada is NOT running out of landfill space and even if it was, incineration is the way to go.
Airstrips, strip malls, golf courses, housing tracts, and Yes even ski hills can be built on former land fill sites.
Notice that the only “incentive” or “encouragement” is in the form of increased PUNITIVE costs to force citizens to “change their behaviour”.
JD, I would have mentioned a reduction of property taxes if a garbage utility was created but having paid attention during various new initiatives which never bring down taxes, there is NO way lower taxes will be the result.
The best that we can work towards is in preserving a voluntary recycling system which continues the citizen’s right to choose how, when and if to recycle material.
We need the system to be the most cost effective one possible. To address distressing economic realities, light, agile, responsive companies and organizations have the advantage. Large ponderous government systems have the same disavantages as large unresponsive ponderous companies. They are remants of the past and can’t adapt easily.
Keep away from Mandatory Curbside if you want cost effectiveness. There will be expanded recycling in Saskatoon, but that can best be addressed in expanding the depot system (Option 3).
You get large increases in recycling without large increases in costs.
btw, Next time I create a video, I’ll make sure the music is upbeat just for you Fred.
Ummmmm….OZ. Correct me if I’m wrong….but is that incentive MORE taxes??? Like as I have said before,there are(is?)only two natural green things in this world…..photosynthesis and nuclear.And funny thing…..plants use both.
Sorry, Justthinkin, I can’t correct you because your post wasn’t coherent enough to understand.
Please restate.
One of the items that surfaced with the closing of Consumers Glass in Mississauga was that despite claims that Blue Box recycled glass went into such industry was that very little used glass was delivered because shipping made it a losing proposition and the glass had for the most part gone into landfill.
Unlike aluminum used glass is no easier, cheaper, or energy efficient to recycle than to use raw silica sand…..if anything more costly and complicated.
McSquinty’s liquor/wine bottle return programme does not divert glass from land fills….it’s just more used glass which goes there anyhoo. It is just too costly to sort these bottles and return them to the distiller/vintner. It’s just a feel good farce.
Daniel’s one sentence recycling-debunking argument: “If recycling is such a great idea, why aren’t resource companies paying me for my garbage?”
The usual counter-point of “it’s for the environment, not for cost benefits” can be debunked with “Then why am *I* paying for it? Why not regulate or tax raw resource collection to the point that it’s economically cheaper for the resource companies to pay for the recycling infrastructure than dig more holes in the ground? Isn’t that more progressive than using tax dollars that could be spent on transgendered performance art or something?”
But then it was always about controlling behaviour, not the environment or the economy.
Sorry Oz….didn’t get the quote in there…
“Notice that the only “incentive” or “encouragement” is in the form of increased PUNITIVE costs to force citizens to “change their behaviour”.
all the opposition to recycling has never included the HUGE costs of finding new landfill sites. it may come as a shock but even though Canada also is HUGE, lots of it is inaccessible barren rock. do you opposers suggest we build rail lines to the tundra? take a look at the history of liberaltown tranna and how they get big daddy in queens park to beat up another ontario municipality to take their 20,000 tons daily.
and maybe, just maybe if garbage collection gets nice and expensive people wont be so ready to toss everything but the kitchen sink.
I visited said tranna at the beginning of the month, a wonderful lady who lives in a condo that has PRIVATE trash collection and huge dumpsters full of RECYCLABLES. thus there is a financial motive to reduce reduce reduce reuse recycle. and it WORKS.
but naturally the myopic right wing still doesn’t get it.
Incineration. They do it in Europe, how bad can it be?
It’s easy to see why costs double with recycling. I have 2 trucks coming to my house every week. 2x the fuel, 2x the labour, etc.
So what about “PUNITIVE costs to force citizens to change their behaviour” do you not understand?
Was the problem because I sarcastically coupled it with the terms “incentive” and “encourage”?
If it was, you should know that I cribbed those words from the video because the video used them that way.
To me, incentive and encouragement means a reward not something punitive.
The maker of the video assumes that recycling is a good thing(it’s own reward) and that it’s going to be rammed down our throats, so we can cooperate and the ramming can go easy or it can go harder.
False dichotomy on his part.
I don’t believe in recycling without real direct benefit because it’s unnecessary and no ramming is going to happen to this Buckaroo without some spirited resistance that these Green Bastids are going to regret.
beagle, screw Toronto.
Toronto’s hangups aren’t my hangups although those scumbags are always forcing their problems on the rest of Canada.
They can EAT their trash for all I care.
Toronto has a gun violence problem and the whole country gets a $2Billion Gun Registry.
“F” Toronto.
“the myopic right wing still doesn’t get it.”
Thanks to your Mom, we’re all getting it good.
A usual to government believes that plugging the sphincter knows as waste disposal will not cause congestion, bloating and all sorts of sickness to the rest of the body.
It’s the intake oraface that is the problem
To put it another way … end bulky packaging or leave it at the store where you are buying stuff … and while you are at it … we could do with less paper … news paper to be precise.
We are a consumer society and we consume in order to support our economy and our own standard of living.
This cannot stop, to it is can be the innocent victim of a tax hungry government.
If it gets too unweildy … guess what happens? People start dumping their garbage long the the road or in your yard.
Somethings cannot be messed with and one of them is our waste. Ask Tony Soprano.
Those parts of Ontario that are “barren inaccessible rock”?
You know the parts that have all those mining roads through them because Ontario had such a huge mining industry and dug all those huge mine shafts through the rock?
Have all those miles deep mines been filled up again yet?
Just wondering, because I think I can tell Ontario what to fill those mines with.
Hey Oz,
The video is very careful not to make value judgements. These are facts. Saskatoon City Council will pick a new recycling system. Citizens can act to get a low cost voluntary system or they can sit back and get a high cost mandatory system. Any discussion about whether or not there are real or only perceived benefits in recycling is missing the point. Act now or pay much more later.
The video clearly states that recycling costs more than putting garbage in the landfill. (Beagle, the huge cost of a new landfill is a red herring. I’ll do a video on it some day.)
It is a warning about how engineering and system consultants have worked with city administrations to move toward their favoured recycling option.
Look at what has happened in Edmonton and make up your own mind. Incidently, when the representative from the city of Saskatoon was asked directly how confident the he was in their cost estimates, he responded that he is very confident that the costs won’t be over 11 million per year. That’s his outside top number.
Anyone else hear the words, ‘low introductory price?’
“Act now or pay much more later.
Yeah, I got that.
How about cut the shit about forced recycling or you’re going to be introduced to a landscape covered with what should be in a nice clean landfill, as an act of civil disobediance?
The Canadian Charter Of Rights gaurantees freedom of religion and nobody is going to force me to the Green Religion.
(and it is a religion)
NUKE THE WHALES
The value of garbage is as fuel for high temp super efficient incinerators which exhaust water vapour and hydrogen and run electric turbines. However don’t hold your breath waiting for the green mafia to get behind an actual solution.
However don’t hold your breath waiting for the green mafia to get behind an actual solution.
They have an actual solution.
It’s the same as the “Final Solution” of the mid-20th century only on a much grander scale of horror.
The answer is to dig in your heels and resist them, not cooperate with them to make it easier.
The left feel so morally smug and superior over recycling but the fact remains there is no market for 99 percent of the products recycled. How much of that 99 percent end up in landfills across the US. Once again the left pat themselves on the back for saving the planet but alas all they are doing is shipping clean garbage to landfills. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work, it’s all about optics and leftwing supremacists’ feeling better than the rest of us.
Norman: “I have 2 trucks coming to my house every week.”
So do I and I only put the recycling cart out when it’s full, about once a month. I’ve also noticed that many of neighbours are doing the same. Having a truck drive up and down the alley, for no apparent reason, is very expensive.
Our municipality just north of Saskatoon was gently threatened to convert our two waste sites and hire a waste disposal company to haul our binned garbage to a land fill just north of Saskatoon. At the same time a mentally handicapped workshop located in one of the small urban centres set up a recycled materials handling system.
The net result of the whole process is that waste disposal cost to the municipality have gone from about $4,500.00 a year to $55,000.00 a year. Of course this comes out of the property taxes.
At the same time the recycled materials handling handicapped workshop is loosing money on every tonne of the different materials, even though the handling costs are low because the workers earn a very small nominal amount and there are few paid staff to supervise. Consequently, the municipality has to pay a subsidy for every bin of recycled materials the handicapped organization. So there is another cost addition to the property taxes.
Wow, Ken, just wow.
I can’t believe anybody puts up with this outrageous rogering and overtaxation.
An increase in cost by over a factor of TEN?
This is the same crap they’re trying to pull in my community and I’ll tell you this, there is a LOT more garabage all over town and the city council is going to get the shock of their lives in the election this fall.
Everybody knows this is the fault of those EnviroNazis and their unintended consequences.
The Commie Mutts just don’t understand human nature.
Working for a municipality I can say with confidence. Garbage all goes in the same hole. Except metal, Which of course makes money. Most of your parks used to be landfills. If not your forested city areas.
Really!
JMO
Everything I need to know about recycling is this: Sweden pioneered it, and they are cutting back on it. Cost containment, y’know. Even ultra-Lefty Sweden can’t ignore a black hole absorbing cubic tons of cash forever.
Meanwhile, the county here just dropped off a brand new blue box on my driveway. I wonder what it costs to hand-deliver a big, blue plastic box to every house in a whole county?
cement kilns make excellant garbage recyling options , and bottle pickers are the cheapest option for sorting
There was a lot of opposition on practical and ideological grounds to mandatory “blue cart” service in Calgary before it was introduced. I was one of the opponents…I gave the CofC telephone pollster some interesting answers when I was called. That said, if you’re going to recycle, it’s a whole new world of convenience. And this is where the problem lies: give people a taste of convenience, and they’ll very quickly forget about their principles…or the $12-20/month that they weren’t spending before.
The epitome of creeping statism…once it’s in, you can’t get it out.
“That said, if you’re going to recycle, it’s a whole new world of convenience.”
Hell, for convenience sake maybe slaves should just turn their paycheques over to the City Council so that the Aldermen can decide what disbrusement their subjects should have.
That would be convenient, eh?
I got out of Calgary before the Blue Cart “service” was rammed down my throat.
The price of $22/month was first floated and you can bank on it being charged and more as soon as the next election is over if it isn’t an issue that’s delt with before hand.
Additionally, you can bank on the people who are demanding your SERVITUDE to become Unionized and strike for higher wages and benefits which will cement those higher charges.
Man, I yearn for the days when Rod Sykes was Mayor.
Yeah, it all comes easy at first but socialism is incremental or the frog would jump out of the pot if the water got too hot too quickly.
Don’t worry, it’s reversible as Solidarity and the Polish people have shown us, but the reversal only happens after the resistance starts.
The sooner and harder the resistance, the sooner the reversal.
Kate, some interesting thoughts about making recycling programs and product management programs competitive in this article: http://www.willmsshier.com/newsletters.asp?id=56
“When recycling collectives with significant power and scale are permitted to use that power to limit access to markets, either through restrictive contracting practices or quota systems which allocate defined quantities of materials to different processors, then open and competitive recycling markets are undermined, business certainty is eroded, and investment and innovation in the recycling industry is compromised.”
Pay as you go is not an issue for me, I just dump my garbage in with my lefty neighbours pile the night before.
It saves gas taking it out to the local windmill farm and dumping it, and I believe they feel better that they are giving more to save the environment.
Calgary provided me with a doggy doo collection bin, much to the shegrin of the wife, I filled the thing with any and all crap I could find, including batterys and pine cones. All beccuse they started chargeing for me to recycle. Let Dave Bronconier sort it out.
I recall the blue bins putting in an appearance here just after they closed the local dump(take your own saturdays) and introduced pickup at the gate.
A rural township, our town/city visitors casually tossed cans and bottles into the garbage and were baffled when we dug them out and blue-boxed them.
When we told them it was coming to them their retort was “I’m not sorting garbage!”….but they do….
Then I recall the local conservation authority (Upper Thames)howling in the media about all the fertilizer they found in the river…..farmers ya know. I suggested they sample above and below London especially after a rain. They were baffled because it appeared that the fertilizer was originating in an urban area.
I explained that farmers incorporated maybe 300-400 lbs per acre…..while urbanites top-dressed their hard packed sod with the equivalent of tons/acre and that pavement and sewers were closeby to take that as run-off.
London had an “energy from waste” setup to supply heat to Westminster Hospital….which had to shut because the local eviro-weinies protested among other things the fly ash went to the land-fill…this was prior to this CO2 insanity.
Currently most of the blue-box stuff goes to the landfill because there just is simply no market….except for the metal….especially aluminum……
There was the periodic surge in attempting to recycle tires a few years past but as usual the fly-by night scammers collected tires, charged a fee then dumped them in piles and woodlots.
The odd thing is #1 rubber(no fibre or wire)has some demand as it is necessary for new tires (2-7% is recycled in the mix to make the rubber cure) while Chinese tires contain often 90% recycled (crappy tires though). My sources tell me Africans have a big demand for good 20″ truck tires but that size is no longer produced in North America but mostly from China…..Chinese tires are not popular in Africa.
Posted by: sasquatch>
“My sources tell me Africans have a big demand for good 20″ truck tires….”
I think those fit over the shoulders better so when they light them on fire, they don’t slip of as easy.
Nothing new here…move on…we got windmills to build!
Hehehe notice there was no mention of removing that portion of property taxes that paid for the original service. Also note that if recycling was actually as viable as these people believe then private companies would be lining up to pay for the privilege of mining the dumps.
gotta love the oh sooooooo calming stinky hippy music in the background.
Makes it all so soothing, so restful.
Soylent Green anyone?
“Soylent Green anyone?”
~Fred
Sure!
And here is some grape Koolaid to wash it down with./
Waste disposal is a CORE infrastructure responsibility of civic government.
Canada is NOT running out of landfill space and even if it was, incineration is the way to go.
Airstrips, strip malls, golf courses, housing tracts, and Yes even ski hills can be built on former land fill sites.
Notice that the only “incentive” or “encouragement” is in the form of increased PUNITIVE costs to force citizens to “change their behaviour”.
JD, I would have mentioned a reduction of property taxes if a garbage utility was created but having paid attention during various new initiatives which never bring down taxes, there is NO way lower taxes will be the result.
The best that we can work towards is in preserving a voluntary recycling system which continues the citizen’s right to choose how, when and if to recycle material.
We need the system to be the most cost effective one possible. To address distressing economic realities, light, agile, responsive companies and organizations have the advantage. Large ponderous government systems have the same disavantages as large unresponsive ponderous companies. They are remants of the past and can’t adapt easily.
Keep away from Mandatory Curbside if you want cost effectiveness. There will be expanded recycling in Saskatoon, but that can best be addressed in expanding the depot system (Option 3).
You get large increases in recycling without large increases in costs.
btw, Next time I create a video, I’ll make sure the music is upbeat just for you Fred.
Ummmmm….OZ. Correct me if I’m wrong….but is that incentive MORE taxes??? Like as I have said before,there are(is?)only two natural green things in this world…..photosynthesis and nuclear.And funny thing…..plants use both.
Sorry, Justthinkin, I can’t correct you because your post wasn’t coherent enough to understand.
Please restate.
One of the items that surfaced with the closing of Consumers Glass in Mississauga was that despite claims that Blue Box recycled glass went into such industry was that very little used glass was delivered because shipping made it a losing proposition and the glass had for the most part gone into landfill.
Unlike aluminum used glass is no easier, cheaper, or energy efficient to recycle than to use raw silica sand…..if anything more costly and complicated.
McSquinty’s liquor/wine bottle return programme does not divert glass from land fills….it’s just more used glass which goes there anyhoo. It is just too costly to sort these bottles and return them to the distiller/vintner. It’s just a feel good farce.
Daniel’s one sentence recycling-debunking argument: “If recycling is such a great idea, why aren’t resource companies paying me for my garbage?”
The usual counter-point of “it’s for the environment, not for cost benefits” can be debunked with “Then why am *I* paying for it? Why not regulate or tax raw resource collection to the point that it’s economically cheaper for the resource companies to pay for the recycling infrastructure than dig more holes in the ground? Isn’t that more progressive than using tax dollars that could be spent on transgendered performance art or something?”
But then it was always about controlling behaviour, not the environment or the economy.
Sorry Oz….didn’t get the quote in there…
“Notice that the only “incentive” or “encouragement” is in the form of increased PUNITIVE costs to force citizens to “change their behaviour”.
all the opposition to recycling has never included the HUGE costs of finding new landfill sites. it may come as a shock but even though Canada also is HUGE, lots of it is inaccessible barren rock. do you opposers suggest we build rail lines to the tundra? take a look at the history of liberaltown tranna and how they get big daddy in queens park to beat up another ontario municipality to take their 20,000 tons daily.
and maybe, just maybe if garbage collection gets nice and expensive people wont be so ready to toss everything but the kitchen sink.
I visited said tranna at the beginning of the month, a wonderful lady who lives in a condo that has PRIVATE trash collection and huge dumpsters full of RECYCLABLES. thus there is a financial motive to reduce reduce reduce reuse recycle. and it WORKS.
but naturally the myopic right wing still doesn’t get it.
Incineration. They do it in Europe, how bad can it be?
It’s easy to see why costs double with recycling. I have 2 trucks coming to my house every week. 2x the fuel, 2x the labour, etc.
So what about “PUNITIVE costs to force citizens to change their behaviour” do you not understand?
Was the problem because I sarcastically coupled it with the terms “incentive” and “encourage”?
If it was, you should know that I cribbed those words from the video because the video used them that way.
To me, incentive and encouragement means a reward not something punitive.
The maker of the video assumes that recycling is a good thing(it’s own reward) and that it’s going to be rammed down our throats, so we can cooperate and the ramming can go easy or it can go harder.
False dichotomy on his part.
I don’t believe in recycling without real direct benefit because it’s unnecessary and no ramming is going to happen to this Buckaroo without some spirited resistance that these Green Bastids are going to regret.
beagle, screw Toronto.
Toronto’s hangups aren’t my hangups although those scumbags are always forcing their problems on the rest of Canada.
They can EAT their trash for all I care.
Toronto has a gun violence problem and the whole country gets a $2Billion Gun Registry.
“F” Toronto.
“the myopic right wing still doesn’t get it.”
Thanks to your Mom, we’re all getting it good.
A usual to government believes that plugging the sphincter knows as waste disposal will not cause congestion, bloating and all sorts of sickness to the rest of the body.
It’s the intake oraface that is the problem
To put it another way … end bulky packaging or leave it at the store where you are buying stuff … and while you are at it … we could do with less paper … news paper to be precise.
We are a consumer society and we consume in order to support our economy and our own standard of living.
This cannot stop, to it is can be the innocent victim of a tax hungry government.
If it gets too unweildy … guess what happens? People start dumping their garbage long the the road or in your yard.
Somethings cannot be messed with and one of them is our waste. Ask Tony Soprano.
Those parts of Ontario that are “barren inaccessible rock”?
You know the parts that have all those mining roads through them because Ontario had such a huge mining industry and dug all those huge mine shafts through the rock?
Have all those miles deep mines been filled up again yet?
Just wondering, because I think I can tell Ontario what to fill those mines with.
Hey Oz,
The video is very careful not to make value judgements. These are facts. Saskatoon City Council will pick a new recycling system. Citizens can act to get a low cost voluntary system or they can sit back and get a high cost mandatory system. Any discussion about whether or not there are real or only perceived benefits in recycling is missing the point. Act now or pay much more later.
The video clearly states that recycling costs more than putting garbage in the landfill. (Beagle, the huge cost of a new landfill is a red herring. I’ll do a video on it some day.)
It is a warning about how engineering and system consultants have worked with city administrations to move toward their favoured recycling option.
Look at what has happened in Edmonton and make up your own mind. Incidently, when the representative from the city of Saskatoon was asked directly how confident the he was in their cost estimates, he responded that he is very confident that the costs won’t be over 11 million per year. That’s his outside top number.
Anyone else hear the words, ‘low introductory price?’
“Act now or pay much more later.
Yeah, I got that.
How about cut the shit about forced recycling or you’re going to be introduced to a landscape covered with what should be in a nice clean landfill, as an act of civil disobediance?
The Canadian Charter Of Rights gaurantees freedom of religion and nobody is going to force me to the Green Religion.
(and it is a religion)
NUKE THE WHALES
The value of garbage is as fuel for high temp super efficient incinerators which exhaust water vapour and hydrogen and run electric turbines. However don’t hold your breath waiting for the green mafia to get behind an actual solution.
However don’t hold your breath waiting for the green mafia to get behind an actual solution.
They have an actual solution.
It’s the same as the “Final Solution” of the mid-20th century only on a much grander scale of horror.
The answer is to dig in your heels and resist them, not cooperate with them to make it easier.
The left feel so morally smug and superior over recycling but the fact remains there is no market for 99 percent of the products recycled. How much of that 99 percent end up in landfills across the US. Once again the left pat themselves on the back for saving the planet but alas all they are doing is shipping clean garbage to landfills. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work, it’s all about optics and leftwing supremacists’ feeling better than the rest of us.
Norman: “I have 2 trucks coming to my house every week.”
So do I and I only put the recycling cart out when it’s full, about once a month. I’ve also noticed that many of neighbours are doing the same. Having a truck drive up and down the alley, for no apparent reason, is very expensive.
Our municipality just north of Saskatoon was gently threatened to convert our two waste sites and hire a waste disposal company to haul our binned garbage to a land fill just north of Saskatoon. At the same time a mentally handicapped workshop located in one of the small urban centres set up a recycled materials handling system.
The net result of the whole process is that waste disposal cost to the municipality have gone from about $4,500.00 a year to $55,000.00 a year. Of course this comes out of the property taxes.
At the same time the recycled materials handling handicapped workshop is loosing money on every tonne of the different materials, even though the handling costs are low because the workers earn a very small nominal amount and there are few paid staff to supervise. Consequently, the municipality has to pay a subsidy for every bin of recycled materials the handicapped organization. So there is another cost addition to the property taxes.
Wow, Ken, just wow.
I can’t believe anybody puts up with this outrageous rogering and overtaxation.
An increase in cost by over a factor of TEN?
This is the same crap they’re trying to pull in my community and I’ll tell you this, there is a LOT more garabage all over town and the city council is going to get the shock of their lives in the election this fall.
Everybody knows this is the fault of those EnviroNazis and their unintended consequences.
The Commie Mutts just don’t understand human nature.
Working for a municipality I can say with confidence. Garbage all goes in the same hole. Except metal, Which of course makes money. Most of your parks used to be landfills. If not your forested city areas.
Really!
JMO
Everything I need to know about recycling is this: Sweden pioneered it, and they are cutting back on it. Cost containment, y’know. Even ultra-Lefty Sweden can’t ignore a black hole absorbing cubic tons of cash forever.
Meanwhile, the county here just dropped off a brand new blue box on my driveway. I wonder what it costs to hand-deliver a big, blue plastic box to every house in a whole county?
cement kilns make excellant garbage recyling options , and bottle pickers are the cheapest option for sorting
There was a lot of opposition on practical and ideological grounds to mandatory “blue cart” service in Calgary before it was introduced. I was one of the opponents…I gave the CofC telephone pollster some interesting answers when I was called. That said, if you’re going to recycle, it’s a whole new world of convenience. And this is where the problem lies: give people a taste of convenience, and they’ll very quickly forget about their principles…or the $12-20/month that they weren’t spending before.
The epitome of creeping statism…once it’s in, you can’t get it out.
“That said, if you’re going to recycle, it’s a whole new world of convenience.”
Hell, for convenience sake maybe slaves should just turn their paycheques over to the City Council so that the Aldermen can decide what disbrusement their subjects should have.
That would be convenient, eh?
I got out of Calgary before the Blue Cart “service” was rammed down my throat.
The price of $22/month was first floated and you can bank on it being charged and more as soon as the next election is over if it isn’t an issue that’s delt with before hand.
Additionally, you can bank on the people who are demanding your SERVITUDE to become Unionized and strike for higher wages and benefits which will cement those higher charges.
Man, I yearn for the days when Rod Sykes was Mayor.
Yeah, it all comes easy at first but socialism is incremental or the frog would jump out of the pot if the water got too hot too quickly.
Don’t worry, it’s reversible as Solidarity and the Polish people have shown us, but the reversal only happens after the resistance starts.
The sooner and harder the resistance, the sooner the reversal.
Kate, some interesting thoughts about making recycling programs and product management programs competitive in this article: http://www.willmsshier.com/newsletters.asp?id=56
“When recycling collectives with significant power and scale are permitted to use that power to limit access to markets, either through restrictive contracting practices or quota systems which allocate defined quantities of materials to different processors, then open and competitive recycling markets are undermined, business certainty is eroded, and investment and innovation in the recycling industry is compromised.”
Pay as you go is not an issue for me, I just dump my garbage in with my lefty neighbours pile the night before.
It saves gas taking it out to the local windmill farm and dumping it, and I believe they feel better that they are giving more to save the environment.
Calgary provided me with a doggy doo collection bin, much to the shegrin of the wife, I filled the thing with any and all crap I could find, including batterys and pine cones. All beccuse they started chargeing for me to recycle. Let Dave Bronconier sort it out.
I recall the blue bins putting in an appearance here just after they closed the local dump(take your own saturdays) and introduced pickup at the gate.
A rural township, our town/city visitors casually tossed cans and bottles into the garbage and were baffled when we dug them out and blue-boxed them.
When we told them it was coming to them their retort was “I’m not sorting garbage!”….but they do….
Then I recall the local conservation authority (Upper Thames)howling in the media about all the fertilizer they found in the river…..farmers ya know. I suggested they sample above and below London especially after a rain. They were baffled because it appeared that the fertilizer was originating in an urban area.
I explained that farmers incorporated maybe 300-400 lbs per acre…..while urbanites top-dressed their hard packed sod with the equivalent of tons/acre and that pavement and sewers were closeby to take that as run-off.
London had an “energy from waste” setup to supply heat to Westminster Hospital….which had to shut because the local eviro-weinies protested among other things the fly ash went to the land-fill…this was prior to this CO2 insanity.
Currently most of the blue-box stuff goes to the landfill because there just is simply no market….except for the metal….especially aluminum……
There was the periodic surge in attempting to recycle tires a few years past but as usual the fly-by night scammers collected tires, charged a fee then dumped them in piles and woodlots.
The odd thing is #1 rubber(no fibre or wire)has some demand as it is necessary for new tires (2-7% is recycled in the mix to make the rubber cure) while Chinese tires contain often 90% recycled (crappy tires though). My sources tell me Africans have a big demand for good 20″ truck tires but that size is no longer produced in North America but mostly from China…..Chinese tires are not popular in Africa.
Posted by: sasquatch>
“My sources tell me Africans have a big demand for good 20″ truck tires….”
I think those fit over the shoulders better so when they light them on fire, they don’t slip of as easy.