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Frank Lee

10-20-2010 08:27 PM

Alarming trash stats

Who Knew? - Yahoo! News

I was aware of the soaring household energy use vs. years past but didn't realize U.S. slobs put out so much more garbage per capita too- plus there are so many more capitas. :mad: :eek:

gone-ot

10-20-2010 08:43 PM

..."throw-away" at it's best -- or, worse -- depending upon point-of-view.

Cd	10-20-2010 08:53 PM

The thing that I didn't like about this segment was that it leaves the viewer with the impression that throwing away trash is something that has happened since the beginning of time, and that it is just part of life. There isn't enough emphasis on the need to streamline what we throw away.

Piwoslaw

10-21-2010 08:39 AM

Not everything should be recycled, especially if it can be reused. For example, it's much better to burn tires in the backyard, or to break grass bottles on bike lanes. Oh, and car batteries and thermometers have cool stuff inside which the kids just love to play with.

PaleMelanesian

10-21-2010 10:00 AM

LOL :p

Phantom

10-21-2010 10:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw (Post 200074)

Not everything should be recycled, especially if it can be reused. For example, it's much better to burn tires in the backyard...

Agreed but tires are better used to burn after being processed and burned with coal. Used in power plants it can provide energy and have cleaner emissions that coal alone.

PaleMelanesian

10-22-2010 10:20 AM

When I took out the trash last night, there were only TWO drawstring kitchen-sized bags in there. One of them was diapers. We're in the process of converting to cloth diapers, which will eliminate half of that. One kitchen bag a week? We could change over to monthly trash pickup instead of weekly.

Some neighbors have two of the big wheeled trash cans every week. :rolleyes:

hypermiler01

10-22-2010 11:27 AM

The good news is that over 50% is biodegradable.

jamesqf

10-22-2010 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cd (Post 199997)

The thing that I didn't like about this segment was that it leaves the viewer with the impression that throwing away trash is something that has happened since the beginning of time...

Sure it is. What the heck do you think most archeologists dig up? Ancient trash, that's what. They don't all get the gold out of King Tut's tomb - which I suppose was arguably just another way of throwing away trash, anyway :-)

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 :-(

Laurentiu

10-22-2010 09:18 PM

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...

jamesqf

10-22-2010 10:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laurentiu (Post 200393)

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

10-23-2010 01:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laurentiu (Post 200393)

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

10-24-2010 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laurentiu (Post 200393)

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

10-25-2010 09:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Laurentiu (Post 200393)

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...

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesqf (Post 200413)

Yeah, but mine barks :-)

Mine clucks. ;)

Wonderboy

10-25-2010 11:27 AM

Quote:

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

10-25-2010 12:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wonderboy (Post 200712)

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

10-25-2010 12:47 PM

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

10-25-2010 02:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesqf

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. :rolleyes: 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

10-25-2010 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wonderboy (Post 200712)

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. :confused:

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!!!! :eek: :eek: 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

10-25-2010 11:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wonderboy (Post 200729)

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.

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