Alarming trash stats

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Laurentiu

does anyone take in account the garbage disposal stuff ? Because if I remember correctly a lot of American houses have one and nobody's counting that...

Yeah, but mine barks :-)

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by Laurentiu

does anyone take in account the garbage disposal stuff ? Because if I remember correctly a lot of American houses have one and nobody's counting that...

Good point. You'd be surprised at what, and how much, people try to put in there...
Garbage disposal accident

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by Laurentiu

does anyone take in account the garbage disposal stuff ?

You mean a shredder in the kitchen sink, so the waste is shredded and going into the sewer ?

They're forbidden over here.

[PaleMelanesian]

Originally Posted by Laurentiu

does anyone take in account the garbage disposal stuff ? Because if I remember correctly a lot of American houses have one and nobody's counting that...

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Yeah, but mine barks :-)

Mine clucks.

[Wonderboy]

Good post Frankly. I love talking about garbage/recycling, I love recovering garbage/recycling and (re)using it. Sometimes I'd like to do it all day. Not even garbage, but foraging in general. I love learning about edible wild plants and mushrooms. Scavengers and parasites generally get a bad or negative image attached to them. I think they are awesome and play an integral role in the grand scheme of things, and could do to be emulated a bit.

Though I agree with the general point about trash volumes. I see my neighbors putting out a wheelie bin or two every week, while I average about half a small trash can every two weeks - and I pay the same as they do :-(

Every municipality deals with garbage collection differently and sometimes it's ingrained enough for it to be really difficult to change. My city began using special bags in the mid 90s for garbage collection to great success. They are sold at local stores where garbage bags are sold, and are priced to cover the cost of collection. The more waste you produce, the more bags you must buy and the more you'll recycle or reuse - this (in theory) eliminates that frustration you encounter by having to pay the same as your highly wasteful neighbors. (there are always people who are going to complain about having to pay for ANYTHING). The grand hope is that people will eventually steer away from buying things with excessive packaging, or packaging at all.

I actually work for public works in my city now, and I'm in a reasonably good position to propose ideas related to garbage collection, and I'm seeing what we can do about a transfer station swap shop to create a space for perfectly good items to be diverted from the landfill, creating a centralized repository of curb loot. Google transfer station swap shop - it's awesome.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Wonderboy

My city began using special bags in the mid 90s for garbage collection to great success. They are sold at local stores where garbage bags are sold, and are priced to cover the cost of collection. The more waste you produce, the more bags you must buy and the more you'll recycle or reuse...

They used the same scheme where I lived in Switzerland. I don't really like it: while it might cut down the amount thrown out, it also means you have to buy the special bags and throw THEM away - and I've never really gotten my head around the idea of buying ordinary plastic trash bags.

[tasdrouille]

I don't care much about trash, probably because we don't produce much to start with.

OTOH I worry about recycling a lot. We have a quite big recycling bin. The kind you often see in rural communities. The big square ones with wheels. And it's always too small for us. I have to pay attention how to pack it to make sure everything fits in every week. The reason I worry is not because I think I need a bigger recycling bin, but because the stuff we buy is way over packaged to start with. Better than recycling is not even having to recycle in the first place.

It's also incredible what people throw away in the trash sometimes. My latest catch was an electric pressure washer, it only needed new plunger seals and it works like new again.

[Wonderboy]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

They used the same scheme where I lived in Switzerland. I don't really like it: while it might cut down the amount thrown out, it also means you have to buy the special bags and throw THEM away - and I've never really gotten my head around the idea of buying ordinary plastic trash bags.

I completely agree. There are better ways, but I still feel like the incentivization of reducing waste in this way outweighs the negative benefit of still using garbage bags. Baby steps for the sheeple. Do you have any insights on alternatives? I don't think "we" are realistically prepared for an alternative to using trash bags.... maybe compostable trash bags could be a start though - make 'em out of corn and keep using food for things other than food (like satiating our garbage guilt) while over a billion people are euphemistically referred to as hungry. I digress. At least we're thinking globally and acting locally here I hope


Out of curiosity, where in Switzerland was this? They had a very interesting system where I visited in Switzerland (Sion, Valais). Garbage/recycling was brought to centralized locations in neighborhoods and deposited into large vessels or dumpsters, separated by material type. One could easily see the impossibility of implementing a system like this in the US, but where (I assume) there is only ONE choice of garbage collection in Switz that everyone foots the bill for, you can see the benefit to reducing the number of garbage and recycling collection points.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by Wonderboy

Good post Frankly. I love talking about garbage/recycling, I love recovering garbage/recycling and (re)using it. Sometimes I'd like to do it all day. Not even garbage, but foraging in general. I love learning about edible wild plants and mushrooms. Scavengers and parasites generally get a bad or negative image attached to them. I think they are awesome and play an integral role in the grand scheme of things, and could do to be emulated a bit.


Every municipality deals with garbage collection differently and sometimes it's ingrained enough for it to be really difficult to change. My city began using special bags in the mid 90s for garbage collection to great success. They are sold at local stores where garbage bags are sold, and are priced to cover the cost of collection. The more waste you produce, the more bags you must buy and the more you'll recycle or reuse - this (in theory) eliminates that frustration you encounter by having to pay the same as your highly wasteful neighbors. (there are always people who are going to complain about having to pay for ANYTHING). The grand hope is that people will eventually steer away from buying things with excessive packaging, or packaging at all.

I actually work for public works in my city now, and I'm in a reasonably good position to propose ideas related to garbage collection, and I'm seeing what we can do about a transfer station swap shop to create a space for perfectly good items to be diverted from the landfill, creating a centralized repository of curb loot. Google transfer station swap shop - it's awesome.

When I was a kid I was torn between wanting to be a garbage man or a brain surgeon when I grew up.

My city has had the special printed bags for at least 19 years that I know of.

I wintered in California last year and OMG I should have taken a pic of their waste swap shop... with an ocean view!!!! I retrieved the boards I put on my cycle hauling trailer there and were I not prepping to go x-country at the time I could have dragged a LOT more goodies back home!!! Oh to have something like that here!

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Wonderboy

Out of curiosity, where in Switzerland was this? They had a very interesting system where I visited in Switzerland (Sion, Valais).

I was living in Lausanne (about halfway along the shore of Lac Leman/Lake Geneva). Sion was a good one-way bike ride* from there. One of the neater-looking towns, I thought, with the castles on the two hills in the middle of the flat valley.

*One of the nicer things about Switzerland, for the touring cyclist is that you can ride all day with no particular destination in mind, then almost always find a train back from close to wherever you wind up.