Pittsburgh Using Fines to Boost Recycling

AP @ Yahoo ^ | 08/07/04 | DAN NEPHIN, Associated Press Writer

[BigBobber]

You know when recycling makes economic sense when private entities are willing to pay you enough for your recyclables to make it worth your trouble.

Thank you. Keep spreading the word. I make sure every recycling thread has this observation in it.

[PAR35]

Costa said failing to recycle costs the city money.

Highly unlikely. All of the recycling programs I have heard of operate at a loss.

[blackdog]

During a visit to Japan in 1988 I got a chance to get an intellectual dose of their "No Recycling" society. They do not recycle because they reuse everything due to precsious land resources and a ban on ocean dumping.

The garbage trucks stage at an offloading depot. The one I observed was in the countryside near Kyoto and Nara. The garbage is dumped near a line of conveyors where people, mostly older females, began to sort it. Paper of any type went on one belt. Plastics another. Glass another. Actual biological waste like banana peels, and mucky ick on another. Each belt then may have had several other sub-belts sorting out certain types of a type of paper or glass or plastic or metal. Eventually the whole process ended up with specificd products for reuse. Even the bio-mass garbage was composted and made into bagged fertilizer for gardens. At the end of the day there wasn't a spec of garbage on the site. It was an extremely labor intensive but efficient system. The only down side was that there was no public guilt to pander to for saving the world by recycling. They actually do it and shut up about it. It's not some agenda or focus of society there.

[MARTIAL MONK]

I'm going to put a bottle in your paper bin.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[RS]

"I asked that very question to my city recycling program manager. He and the company that actually collects the stuff, gave me the, IMHO, lame answer of, "nobody wants to put groceries in a used bag".

Your city recycling manager actually said that ? Does he seriously think they wash out used milk containers and beer cans ? LOL

If you have some local morning news program they might get a kick out of hearing that story and ask him the same question on air...

[DLfromthedesert]

Oh, so it doesn't bother you to have city snoops going through your garbage?

[ThinkDifferent]

"The feedback I've been getting is, 'It's about time because I've been recycling and my neighbor hasn't been,'" Costa said.

What sniveling bootlickers.

[Dan Evans]

And if you don't subscribe to a newspaper or buy things in recyclable containers, you'd better start.

I was thinking the same thing. I haven't subscribed to a newspaper for twenty years and I rarely buy soda or beer.

Enviro-facists. We ought to just hang 'em.

[Atlas Sneezed]

During a visit to Japan in 1988 I got a chance to get an intellectual dose of their "No Recycling" society...The garbage is dumped near a line of conveyors where people, mostly older females, began to sort it.

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Where I live, we have plenty of empty land for hundreds of miles around. A few miles outside of town, there is a big hole in the ground. Trucks take all our garbage and dump it there, and bulldozers cover it up. We have weekly home pickup of up to seven garbage cans for $5 per week.

And we devote zero extra real estate in our kitchen or garage to special trash storage, and zero time to sorting our trash.

I'd even be happy if our community earned money by accepting trucks full of trash from other cities that wanted to drive it here.

[rivercat]

Nope, doesn't bother me a bit. I shred anything that matters. Once I put the garbage out on the curb, it's theirs, not mine.