Lets talk trash

[lala]

You Are kidding about putting your oil in the storm drain, right?

Here in Seattle, we're phasing into mandatory recycling, which is not a bad thing. This year, if you have 'too much' recyclable waste, you get warnings. Next year, you get fined, and if that doesn't work,they they refuse to pick up your garbage. My lovely landlord also has one dumpster for the entire 20 unit building, and two pickups a week mean that I have to time when I dump the stinky stuff, as the dumpster tends to get full of weekend shopping detrius by Sunday night. There's no recycling bins yet, so I'm curious to see what he'll do when it hits him in the pocketbook.

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Well, the storm drain leads to the sewers, right, and then the sewers lead to a waste treatment plant somewhere I'd imagine, so, I can't see how that is any worse than putting it into a can and tossing it (also, I don't have any old coffee cans laying around, and deep fryers make for quite a bit of waste oil when it is time to change. I have played around with the idea of picking up an old MB 300D or some other diesel vehicle and playing with making my own bio-diesel, but as for yet I haven't gotten around to it.

And as for Seattle mandatory recycling and waste guidelines: ick. The more I hear about how intrusive the govt. is in your daily life in many west coast communities, the more I realize I could never happily live there.

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I don't know where you live, but in any city that I've lived in, East Coast, Midwest and West Coast, storm drains go directly into the nearest body of water - you might as well take that used, nasty oil with you when you go to the river/lake/beach and dump it right into the water.

A quick google for 'storm drain' shows these results - here are three random sites from Chesapeake Bay foundation, Oakland, Ca, and Hawaii that explain what happens to whatever goes into the storm drain:

http://www.cbf.org/site/PageServer?pagenam...utdoors_stencil

http://www.oaklandpw.com/keep_oakland_beau...ain_stencil.htm

http://protectingwater.com/storm-drains.html

And recycling is not intrusive for anyone who gives a damn about the environment. Let's do what we can to leave the earth in somewhat reasonable condition for our kids and grandkids!

Edited January 20, 2005 by lala (log)

[jgarner53]

In San Francisco, we have three bins provided by the city: black, blue, and green, all nicely done with good sturdy wheels and designed to work with their trucks. Black bin gets all non-compostable, non-recyclable stuff, including fry oil (I pour back into the container whence it came), meat parts, small children, what have you.

Blue is for recycling: newspaper, cans, paper, cardboard, glass. I don't think they're keen on the plastic bags because they tend to get loose and are a garbage blight all over the city. Those we bag up and take to a supermarket with a recycling center for plastic bags. We use the newspaper bag for cleaning the cat box. If we happen to have the plastic six-pack rings, they get cut to ribbons so if they get loose, they won't ensnare some hapless animal or bird. Beer bottles that can be recapped (and that are brown) are washed and saved for my husband and his beer brewing (the circle of beer!), as are the cardboard six-pack holders (well, they don't get washed)

Green bin is for compostables. We have a compost pile, so only use non-meat waste, but the city says that you can include meat if you're sending it to them. You can also put lawn and yard clippings in the green bin. They've also given us a smaller green bin for the kitchen, where coffee grounds, fruit and veg waste, egg shells, etc. go. (The only exception I make to that is when something goes liquidy or really gross in the fridge, and I'd have to open the bag, take off the twisty tie holding the remnants together, and pitch it into the bin). We have these great biodegradable liners that we use -- a great solution to the trash bag problem.

We probably only put out one bag's worth of trash trash a week, major holidays excepted, but there are only two of us.

[ghostrider]

My town's had voluntary recycling since we moved here 14 years ago. I started using it immediately. They switched from the recycling-center concept to curbside collections somewhere in there. Too many residents refused to separate their cans & glass & bottles tho, the town tried that for a few years & people just trashed their recyclables rather than separating them. That's Jersey for you. So now it's mixed-materials collection. The town gets less $$ per ton but more than makes up for it in volume.