Comments on: More Indentured Servitude in San Francisco

By: markm

markm — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:33:25 +0000

As for methane, it can be collected from landfills and large composting operations. That might be the most sensible biofuel available.

By: markm

markm — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:30:40 +0000

jacquesvachy, you seem to be assuming that morganovich lives in the same state as you. I’ve never heard of a CVR, and you won’t find it on a soda can in Michigan – but we do pay a 10 cent deposit on the can or bottle, which we can get back by returning it to the store. Or if there’s too long of a line, make a gift to the homeless man talking to himself in the corner. He’s got time to wait a half hour for $0.60, and you don’t have to be mentally competent to put the can in the slot…

Originally, soda (beer and milk, too) came in thick reusable glass bottles, and the sellers voluntarily collected and refunded deposits to get the valuable bottles back. The manufacturers realized that their customers hated the inconvenience of returning the bottles, so they introduced various “no deposit, no return” containers: wax paper milk cartons, aluminum drink cans, much thinner glass bottles, and finally plastic bottles. And at some point during the 1960′s people started noticing that the roadsides and parks were covered with soda and beer containers. (Funny how milk cartons never were a problem…) So some states passed laws making deposits mandatory on soda and beer containers. Because some people were irresponsible, the government made all of us donate time and storage space, even if we never litter, and even if we’re drinking the soda at home.

It really had nothing at all to do with recycling; while aluminun is definitely worth shipping back to the smelters, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see truckloads of shredded plastic bottles going from the collection centers to the dump. Recycling plastic involves a lot more than just sorting and melting it down.

And other states had other solutions to littering. When I was serving with the Air Force in New Mexico, it was common to see a group of men in orange clothes picking up trash by the road, superintended by one Deputy Sheriff – one of my sergeants spent six months on that detail for drunk driving. I think New Mexico’s roadsides were cleaner with no deposit than Michigan’s were with the ten cent deposit.

There is one good effect I can see to the deposit laws: They create opportunities for kids and bums to earn a little cash, collecting the containers and turning them in. You probably won’t make minimum wage, but you make something. Note that recyclable aluminum is worth a cent or so per can, so someone would probably be collecting the cans anyhow, but not bottles.

By: jacquesvachy

jacquesvachy — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:54:33 +0000

Morganovich, did you ever bother to take a look at your receipt after buying something in cans or bottles? You’ll notice a charge labled CRV. That means you are PAYING a DEPOSIT on each can or bottle. When the can or bottle is empty, you may choose to forfeit your deposit by putting the items in the recycling bin or you may undertake the effort to reclaim the deposit by bringing the items to a recycling center. If you put a bottle in a recycling bin, you are making a gift of 5 cents to a private corporation named NorCal. They make a profit from such gifts. The recycling is not handled by a city agency or non-profit organization. If you choose to make gifts to NorCal, go right ahead. I seperate my cans or bottles and when I’ve accumulated a few bags, bring them a few blocks to the recycling center and give them to some grateful person standing on line. NorCal has taken a proprietary attitude toward these cans and bottles, as if anyone who interferes with the provision of this resource free of charge to them is ‘stealing’ from them.
They run a composting center up in Petaluma. They SELL, for a PROFIT, this compost to farmers. Once this composting law goes into effect, the residents of San Francisco will be constrained to deliver, without compensation, a raw material to a private corporation which will then treat that resource and sell it at a profit. The city of San Francisco gets NOTHING in return. Anent greenhouse gas emissions, I fail to understand the benefits of composting over burying food scraps. In either case, methane will be released into the atmosphere- it seems a wash. Certainly, though, it would be less toxic to the soil and rivers were farmers to use compost and cease to use petroleum-based fertilizers. I’d be happy to set aside food scraps if I knew they were being given, not sold, to small-time farmers and that NorCal wasn’t profitting from my labor. In any case, the State, as always, has no legitimate authority to compel this behavior.

By: mishu

mishu — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:09:04 +0000

This is why I love my Waste King garbage disposal unit. Just toss those compostables in that hole in the sink, put the cover on, flick a switch and all that crap gets ground up and washed away down the drain.

By: Jess

Jess — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:50:56 +0000

Jim (and others),
The very best analysis of the “recycle” steps & programs w/real, verifable data is the great volume “Rubbish”, the Archaeology of Garbage (Harper Collins).

It may just be the most authoritative statement yet on “household waste”, the “waste stream” and “recycling”, and is very easy to read… and their take on “sorting” is, well, epic…

By: HS

HS — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:45:18 +0000

Hope the rats don’t cause Black Death againin SF. We are allowed to have composts in the backyard but can’t have food like meat in them because they attract rodents.

By: Craig

Craig — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:05:27 +0000

It would also be interesting to know how many truck trips are required per week for the 3-bin system vs. the one-can system. You need 2-3 trucks for the former, instead of 1 for the latter.

By: Meredith Wright

Meredith Wright — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:51:29 +0000

Oh, Clem, you beat me to it! The Penn & Teller “Bulls**t” show that exposes trash recycling was one of my favorites! I highly recommend it – they point out how innane the entire thing is … besides wasting time and money.

By: Clem

Clem — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:19:46 +0000

Penn and Teller on their Showtime Channel show Bulls**t looked at recycling (I watched a DVD–I think it was their 2nd season). Their expert said regular trash collection to the landfill is $60/ton while trash plus recycling was around $150/ton (ignoring the costs of citizen’s time). The only recycling that made sense was aluminum.

By: spiro

spiro — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:02:54 +0000

But MikeL, being “green” feels good (and might get me laid on campus). Why you gotta come in with the buzzkill science and facts stuff?
Al Gore never hurt anybody. He just wanted to be important. So he stuck his finger in the wind, and found that the environ-mentals were his ticket to history.
For his sake, I just hope he passes away before he is fully exposed as the charlatan that he is. And I hope this move finally got Tipper to stop sleeping in a separate bedroom.