|
Take Portland, for instance. Some crazy law allows garbage to only be collected once every 2 weeks, and the bin size is tiny. They require people to separate their compostable materials into another festering container. Then you have a glass container, and finally a monster of a recycle container. Most of the residents don't have the land to make use of the compost, so it must go to some company who then makes a profit by selling the collected compost.
Because masses of people are bound to have some knuckleheads, all of it must be sorted anyhow. There will be compost in the recycle, garbage in the recycle, recycle in the compost... so you have millions of people doing a poor job of sorting because it isn't their job and often they don't care, and then you have a 2nd sort done at the facility. This represents millions of minutes of human life devoted to a menial task which is better done by a professional.
If the material has value, as the article linked by James suggests, then there is incentive for the business to sort everything regardless of how well suppliers (garbage customers) separate things.
Brooks is a city that has a garbage incinerator that converts waste into electricity. Seems to me that between the value in the recyclable material, and the fuel being provided to the electric generators, that should at least break even with the cost to collect it, especially if I'm also an unpaid employee that sorts everything for them.
Someone is making millions of dollars on us and tricking us into believing we're getting a good deal because it only costs $15/mo to take away our "trash". There has got to be some politicians with dirty hands involved in this scam as well.
|