#15
Post
by BenThere » Sun Sep 24, 2017 7:39 pm
When I lived in Yuba City, California, a city of 70,000 or so, my next door neighbor was the general manager of the Yuba City waste collection operation. We were pretty good friends, doing barbecues and the like, and when I moved to Italy after a couple of years there, he bought my Chevy pickup.
While I lived there, we were converted, from garbage bins that we could select and determine how many we could put out at the curb on collection day, and take our recyclables to a private collection center which would pay us for recyclables of value, to a three bin system that provided a large bin for recyclables, and two bins roughly half the size for garbage and compostables. There were no mandates, fines or inspections enforcing what you put in your bins, but most citizens were concerned that such a regime was just around the corner.
I had a chat with my neighbor about how my collection bill had more than doubled in a short time and why is that. His answer was that the new bins were a cost burden, the city had to expand its landfill, and new trucks had to be acquired to accomplish 3 different pickups rather than the previous one pickup. I can understand that.
But then he said that to date, everything was going into the same landfill because the city hadn't yet built facilities to process the recyclables and compostables. "What?!", I exclaimed. Why wasn't that the first step in this expensive process?
After thinking about our conversation I came up with the idea of single bin collection, but conveyer belt sorting operated by our adequate population of prisoners. An operation could be set up where all the trash is picked up and taken to the conveyer facility where prisoners could sort the recoverable recyclables. The prisoners would keep a portion of the value of the materials they sorted and placed in their bins. They could bid for positions offering the most opportunity, like aluminum, hard plastic, paper, etc. based on a point system rewarding good behavior, self-improvement, seniority and such. The junior guy on the line would end up composting the dog crap, but would work his way up the line.
You could write a thesis developing this. The plusses include more efficient waste processing, incentives for prisoners and instilling a work ethic, real recycling, and ultimately a better environment. Along with that, Joe Public gets to dump everything in the bins without sorting and no busybodies inspecting his trash for evidence of resistance. Win-win.