D.O.P.-T.

[weofodthignen]

An oldie but goodie that I don't recall having seen before.

Speaking of administrative waste and obstruction, today's mail brought a postcard informing us that our perfectly serviceable greenwaste bin is to be collected and replaced with a new one conforming to state standards. They say the old ones will be recycled ... hah. Probably the current ones are too big. Can't have people recycling so many yard clippings at a time. Or they aren't the precise official colour. Or the address for the waste hauler printed on the side has changed.

Comments

[captainsblog]

When we moved here in 1994, recycling was in "blue boxes" that were maybe three feet tall and open to the air. Then we got rolling totes* for the regular garbaggge, followed a few years later by similar sized ones for recyclables with a green top to distinguish from the refuse-tote blue. They are both designed to be picked up by a mechanical arm on the truck that slings the contents into the back so a human doesn't have to do it.

Those original blue-topped totes are starting to age out. A few months ago, Eleanor came home to find the part that the arm picks up had been neatly sliced in half, and cat litter (used:P) and other detritus was all over the street. She cleaned it up and called the town (which contracts it out to a private service). They tried to get us to pay several hundred bucks for a new one because the original was "out of warranty," but they relented and brought a new (and somewhat better designed) tote the next day- "this time." Meanwhile, on walkies with the dog, I've seen at least two neighbors' totes in recent weeks with one of their wheels pulled off. No idea if they're going to try to charge THEM to replace them.

* I've seen some recycling sites that avoid the T-word for their "recycling containers" because they think the Totes rubbers/umbrella company is going to sue them for trademark infringement. I don't think that's how it works.

[weofodthignen]

That's ridiculous, they're the ones breaking them ... At least when the double lids and insert assembly comes off one of our split carts (recycling, for paper and everything else; trash, for actual trash and kitchen scraps), the company responds on the phone and sends a replacement.

[warriorsavant]

A little while back, I got scolded b/c my shredded paper had to be put in a paper bag to go in the recycling, which meant I would have had to have bought additional paper products, thereby wasting more paper that I was recycling.

[weofodthignen]

I hate that system with the requirement to use paper grocery bags. When I was in Duluth, the housemate absolutely refused to recycle after they left our recycling box unemptied the first time with a nasty note about every category having to be in a separate paper grocery bag. She insisted on everything just getting bagged up together and went on at sweary length about the poor workers at the dump who were losing their jobs because of people separating out their cans and bottles. She had a very valid basic point; we shopped using her cloth bags that she'd made. Until one day she left them in her cart while getting something and somebody stole them all ...

Originally Google Street View had a remarkable record for photographing residential neighbourhoods on pickup day, so you got to see the carts they used. I should go back through teh early Street View images of Duluth and see if they ever stopped using those little boxes and, one hopes, requiring paper bags.

[warriorsavant]

Rarely, Google Maps/Streetview can be used as a sort of time machine. Read a story about one person, whose father had died years before, but Streetview had caught him mowing the lawn one year, and when they were missing their father, they would look at the picture.