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Columbus ought to provide recycling bins

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Started 5 years ago by Walker
Latest reply from ddavis

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Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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Columbus ought to provide recycling bins
Sunday, June 11, 2006
I am very puzzled that Columbus does not provide recycling bins to every household in addition to the trash bins. Every other city I have lived in did so.
I believe many people will recycle, but not at their own expense. Our household has paid for recycling since we moved here, and most weeks our recyclable waste exceeds the rest.
We frequently hear how much it costs to dispose of nonrecyclables and that space for such is becoming scarce.
Surely the city can remedy this by giving its residents the opportunity to decrease the amount of material that is headed for the landfills. It seems that the extra cost of providing recycling bins should offset the increasing cost of waste disposal.
STACEY E. SHEHIN
Reynoldsburg
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While I agree that the city should do a better job on recycling, I can't help but laugh that this woman lives in Reynoldsburg. Does the city of Columbus even handle her trash???
Plus, it's humorous that she makes it sound like all the city needs to do is provide bins. That should be cheap, right? There's no other logistics or equipment or labor involved, right?
If recycling is important to you, there are places you can take your recyclables to drop them off all over town. People can whine all they want about it being inconvenient, but it's not like you're not driving all over the place anyway. If it's important to you, it's worth the 2-second detour to drop them off. :roll:

Posted 5 years ago #
bonniefide
NE Side
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Walker wrote If recycling is important to you, there are places you can take your recyclables to drop them off all over town. People can whine all they want about it being inconvenient, but it's not like you're not driving all over the place anyway. If it's important to you, it's worth the 2-second detour to drop them off. :roll:
I agree with you. If you go to http://www.swaco.org, you can look up drop-off locations. I found out I have one that I can ride my bike to! Not like that's always feasible if I have alot... but still... it shouldn't stop people from recycling just because they don't have a bin. People are too lazy to care about the environment half the time.

Posted 5 years ago #
Ndcent
OTE
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Reynoldsburg has recycling bins, so wtf..

Posted 5 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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Perhaps someone should send a followup letter to the Dispatch?

Posted 5 years ago #
gazercmh
It began in Clintonville-ville-ville-ville
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it's possible that her trash/recycling is handled by Columbus even though her city is listed as Reynoldsburg in her letter.
it's also possible that she is served by Reynoldsburg and just thinks it's bad that Columbus doesn't offer its residents free recycling bins and services. i don't think you have to live in city to have an opinion about whether or not it should offer its residents recycling services.
i basically agree with her. mrs gazercmh recently got us on the recycling program in columbus and i have been pleasantly surprised that more than half of what we used to throw away is now being recycled.
we used to recycle newspapers and other things via the drop-offs, and while walker may think it only takes two extra seconds, i found it to be a hassle. we had stuff piling up at home waiting to be dropped off, then you get your hands and car dirty hauling it.
i don't know what it would cost for the city to run a recycling program for all residents without charging them, but i do know it would reduce waste considerably.

Posted 5 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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gazercmh wrote i have been pleasantly surprised that more than half of what we used to throw away is now being recycled.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I'd say we fill at least one jumbo black bag of recyleable material for every one medium white bag of trash we throw away.
we used to recycle newspapers and other things via the drop-offs, and while walker may think it only takes two extra seconds, i found it to be a hassle. we had stuff piling up at home waiting to be dropped off, then you get your hands and car dirty hauling it.
If you go to the grocery store once a week, you can drop off recyclables once a week. Or you can do it on the way to any other errands on a weekly basis. It isn't hard. The things don't "pile up" in a week any faster if you're dropping them off or having them picked up. If you let them pile up for weeks at a time, it would be the same as if you forget to put your recycle bin out at the curb for weeks at a time. :roll: As for getting dirty... perhaps some newsprint might get on your hands, but that's going to happen whether you take it somewhere or have it picked up. And it's no dirtier than actually reading the newspaper. 8) Plastic, cans, bottles should all be washed out whether you drop-off or pick-up, so that stuff shouldn't be "getting you dirty". Keep everything in bags and it shouldn't get your car dirty either when dropping-off.
Really... there's not much difference. You can either pay for the one that involves slightly less work, or you can take the free option that requires slightly more work. Either one is great to be doing, and I really think that people who sit around and COMPLAIN and do neither are idiots.
i don't know what it would cost for the city to run a recycling program for all residents without charging them, but i do know it would reduce waste considerably.
I don't know either, but I'm sure it would be a lot of money. Mainly for the larger fleet of vehicles, maintenance, gas, and especially LABOR costs.
Besides... it's not like it would really be a FREE service. We'd all be paying for it in taxes... just a slightly different form of paying. :roll:

Posted 5 years ago #
honavery
Arizona
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I think a lot more people would do it if they offered the curb side stuff.

Posted 5 years ago #
ander1999

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And now back to taxes...You currently pay for trash in taxes and then have to pay an additional fee to a private company for recycling.
Why "punish" people to recycle? How about the opposite:
You pay for recycling in taxes and then have to pay an additional fee to a private company to have the trash picked up.
Talk about encouraging good behavior!

Posted 5 years ago #
Anne
King Lincoln
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I think that would be great ander!

Posted 5 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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honavery wrote I think a lot more people would do it if they offered the curb side stuff.
Of course more people would do it. Why not when you're already paying for it in taxes, right?
I'd rather have the choice to do it myself and not pay for it. Why do I need to pay some dude a salary plus other expenses to pick up my recycleables when I'm perfectly capible of taking them to a drop-off myself?
ander1999 wrote Why "punish" people to recycle? How about the opposite:
You pay for recycling in taxes and then have to pay an additional fee to a private company to have the trash picked up.
Talk about encouraging good behavior!
That would be awesome! :D I wonder if any cities have tried to do anything like this? Very interesting idea... I wonder if it would cause some people to just throw trash in their recyling bins out of laziness just like people throw recyclables in their trash out of laziness? That could get messy.

Posted 5 years ago #
Brewmaster
Portland, OR
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^ That's how it was where I grew up (suburban Cleveland). If you got caught with recycleables or yard waste in your trash can, you'd get hit with a fine. It worked too. My parents would get mad at us when they caught us throwing recycleables into the trash.

Posted 5 years ago #
honavery
Arizona
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Well my point was, don't we want more people to recycle? Would it be worth paying the taxes for the "greater good"?
I bet significantly more people would do it.

Posted 5 years ago #
Anne
King Lincoln
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Perhaps OH should institute a deposit fee on bottles/glass that you can get back when you take them in to get recycled. More people might do that if they were getting their own money back.

Posted 5 years ago #
ddavis
Westgate
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I would definitely recycle if I could set it on the curb. I'm not about to collect it and drop it off wherever... I used to live with someone who liked to recycle and it would sometimes pileup :wink: Don't you think a program would actually cost you less because it would be less vehicles driving around to drop off those recylceables? You know, like carpooling?

Posted 5 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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ddavis wrote I used to live with someone who liked to recycle and it would sometimes pileup :wink:
Ha, yes... i'll admit I let it slide sometimes... :p
Don't you think a program would actually cost you less because it would be less vehicles driving around to drop off those recylceables?
Eh... i dunno about that. If I weren't recycling I'd still be driving around and running errands. The drop-off nearest me (and probably nearest to everyone) is at a Kroger, which I'm going to go to from time to time anyway. It's really only an extra 200 feet of driving across a parking lot to drop them off. :roll:
I would definitely recycle if I could set it on the curb.
Ok... so the city would provide you a bin instead of you using your own.
You still have to collect the recycleables in your house/garage either way, so the "pile up" point is moot.
Then you either take it to your curb or to your car. Probably about the same distance.
The final step is either you dropping them off while running errands, or having someone pick them up, and you go get your bin and bring it back inside.
Really, the two techniques aren't much different. It's just that one is free and one costs money whether it's subscription-based or built into your taxes.
I know a lot of people say they'd do it if the city held their hand with it, but I really just don't know why that is so motivational. Shouldn't the act of recyling be pretty motivational on it's own, no matter which way you do it? Why will people only work towards the goal of saving the planet if it requires as minimal an effort on their part as possible? I guess i just don't get it.
Screw FREE recycling. I'll only do it if someone PAYS me to! :roll:

Posted 5 years ago #
Ndcent
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Anne wrote Perhaps OH should institute a deposit fee on bottles/glass that you can get back when you take them in to get recycled. More people might do that if they were getting their own money back.
But then I would drink even more beer.

Posted 5 years ago #
honavery
Arizona
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I agree with Walker, people should be more pro-active about it, but the fact is most are not.
I still think its way less of a hassle if you someone picks it up for you, and that significantly more people will do it with a curb side program.

Posted 5 years ago #
gazercmh
It began in Clintonville-ville-ville-ville
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walker, are you actually re-typing your comments here each time or just copying and pasting over and over? :P

Posted 5 years ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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gazercmh wrote walker, are you actually re-typing your comments here each time or just copying and pasting over and over? :P
Re-typing... helps the day go by at work. :lol:
Yeah, I tend to repeat myself sometimes... but so does everyone else...

Posted 5 years ago #
Anne
King Lincoln
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Nice column by Joe Blundo on July 18, 2006. Columbus Dispatch:
What we waste is a disgrace
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
JOE BLUNDO

Aluminum cans are worth about 2 cents each as scrap. Clean wastepaper brings $85 to $95 a ton. Cardboard is worth about $80 a ton. And still we throw this stuff away. Are we crazy? Mayor Michael B. Coleman put a pilot recycling program out of its misery recently because the participation rates were anemic.
The program offered 10,000 households on the South Side the chance to buy 15-cent blue bags in which to put their recyclables, which could then be set out with the trash. Only 850 households were participating.
Residents can still recycle by paying $5 a month for a red bin thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s emptied by Rumpke Recycling. Only 10,000 of the cityÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s 323,000 households are doing that.
To put it mildly, Columbus is not in the forefront of recycling. Coleman says he wants to change that. Good. Because what weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re doing now is atrociously wasteful.
To me, the primary issue isnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t that weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re going to run out of space at the landfill, although we will eventually. Far worse are the environmental costs of producing from new material what we could be making from recyclables.
Consider aluminum cans. The world uses about 200 billion of them a year.
"ThatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s 3 million tons of metal Ã¢â‚¬â€ about 10 percent of the worldÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s aluminum supply Ã¢â‚¬â€ for a product with a useful life measured in minutes," said a study published by the World Watch Institute, an environmental research organinization.
Despite their recyclable value, one of every two aluminum cans ends up in landfills. To replace the discards, bauxite Ã¢â‚¬â€ the chief ore of aluminum Ã¢â‚¬â€ must be mined and refined, which produces a toxic mud waste and requires great quantities of electricity.
Name the problem Ã¢â‚¬â€ air pollution, water pollution, habitat loss, global warming Ã¢â‚¬â€ and aluminum production contributes to it.
Were we to recycle every can, we would save very little landfill space: Aluminum cans account for a little more than 1 percent of the waste dumped into the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio landfill on Rt. 665.
But a big savings would come in electricity: The 810,000 tons of cans thrown away in the United States in 2004, combined with the 300,000 tons discarded in the rest of the world, could have been turned into new cans, at a savings of 16 billion kilowatt hours of electricity over using new aluminum, the institute reports.
The product that really clogs the landfill is paper, accounting for 38 percent of total waste. Here again, we toss something thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s valuable and that can be produced from new material only at substantial environmental cost.
The price for clean-waste office paper is up 50 percent from three years ago, said Steve Grossman of the Grossman Group, which recycles paper in a warehouse at the old trash-burning power plant. The value of recycled cardboard, he said, has doubled in the past 18 months.
And there is actually a shortage of waste plastic. ThatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s right: Plastics recyclers are begging for more of a raw material that we routinely throw away.
The mayor, after killing the failed blue-bag program, said he would increase the number of drop boxes and encourage more business participation in an effort to improve the cityÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s feeble recycling record.
I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t know whether thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s enough. All I know is weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re in the absurd situation of burying valuable stuff for no good reason.
You can call that a solid waste.
Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist.
jblundo@dispatch.com

Posted 5 years ago #