People are going absolutely bonkers here. Many are calling for the ousting of County Commissioners, etc, etc, etc. What's all the hoopla about? Recycling collection, in the (unincorporated) parts of our county, ended on October 1st. It's still being collected in the cities, but even the city officials admit, they don't know what to do with the stuff. There is no market, but worst of all, it doesn't make money, it COSTS money to recycle. Just in the unincorporated parts of the county (only 140,000 people), the county is saving 5.5 million $$$/year now, by NOT recycling. My neighbor jokes with me and asks how I feel now that I'm a dirtbag, planet earth destroying, deplorable. The county line is actually my backyard fence line. When we stand and talk over our fence, he's standing in his back yard in the city and I'm in my back yard in the county!
When we go out to California, Lynn's mom has FOUR large bins to drag out to the curb. I can't even remember what they're for, I "think" yard waste, "recyclables", garbage and something else that I can't even remember. She has THREE bins in her kitchen, garbage, recyclables and the other is food stuff like potato peels, egg shells, vegetable trimmings, etc. Maybe that's what the third bin outside is for, wet garbage maybe?, i dunno. It's pure stupidity ... they send FOUR big garbage trucks out to dump these bins. Do those people not realize the carbon footprint of those trucks? There is also the payroll for everyone on those trucks to consider. Of course, there's the labor involved to separate all this stuff. If a California MacD's burger flipper has to be paid $15/hour, I can't image what a highly skilled garbage sorter has to be paid! Another stupid thing is, all the bottles and cans, etc. have to be clean, so in a state suffering from a major drought for many years now and stringent water use restrictions, all this stuff has to be washed/rinsed before going into the bins. How many bazillion gallons of water does that waste?
Here at home, we have three pick-ups, yard waste, recyclables and garbage. (now we're down to two, yard waste and the "recyclable" crap goes in with the regular garbage) It's been a process, In the early days, the recyclables included paper, cardboard, glass, tin cans, aluminum, plastics, metal ... most anything not determined to be "garbage". After a few years, it wasn't working and was chiseled down and everything had to be CLEAN (no oily pizza boxes for example) paper/cardboard, metal/aluminum cans and ONLY opaque, (like milk jugs with no color) plastic. Clear plastics did not qualify ... Coke bottles, water bottles, etc? Nope.
I know recycling is a "feel good" type thing and I'll admit, it's still tough for me to throw aluminum cans in with the garbage, but it just ain't worth the hassle. The county does have collection areas if you want to drive to the dump (a 40 mile round-trip for me), so should I burn 2 gals of gas to "do the right thing"? Ooops, adding pollution to reduce pollution! See? it doesn't work. Coincidentally, I had this discussion with an old Army buddy the other day and he sent me this video last night. It's pretty interesting.
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