Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Garbage, part 2

I just found out that Columbus,OH, has a curbside recycling rate of only about 3 percent. Only 11,342 households in the city -- out of about 350,000-- recycle at curbside. Ugh. Our mayor even says this is "pitiful."

This explains all those cans full of garbage I see every week.

5 comments:

Sandy said...

We had a curbside recycling program here, but out of all the homes on my street there were only 3 of us doing that. So... the city decided that it wasn't cost-effective to keep doing it. The nice thing is that they now have 3 sites you can take your recycables (is that a word) to. So, I keep mine in bins (reused) and a bag for plastics (also reused) and go about once a month to the recycle site. Works for me! I think the problem with the recycling program here was that it was every other week and only ran from March - November. People could never remember what week to put out the recycle bin. Of course, they sent us a schedule, but I'm sure there were very few that even read it. It was so great to have that service. I'm sorry it's gone, but glad that they gave us another alternative.

DeniseT said...

Our city does have drop points. I think the Mayor's goal is to have a recycing drop box at every school parking lot in the city. A noble goal. But, there is also a financial disincentive to recycle. Garbage collection here is free, but it costs $5 a month to recycle. No one wants to pay!

Twilightboy said...

Good afternoon!

I myself use one of the drop points. It's nice as the recycling is sorted by them ; you can just put all of the recyclables together in one place, then drop it off.

The city of Dayton, and a few suburbs here in town, have free door-to-door recycling programs. I would presume Dayton's is paid by simply 'cashing in' things like the cans, etc. That would be a way to help pay for the service, instead of the $5 / month here the service usually is. If I did ever meet some city people, I would certainly pass the idea along to them.

min hus said...

I live in Columbus and would gladly pay for recycling, but it's not offered in my neighborhood (I live in a weird township in Columbus). So I schlep my recycling to a drop off. When I lived in a neighborhood that did have it, they said they were discontinuing it and wouldn't let anyone new sign up. Maybe other folks have the same issue? I wonder what ever happened to the blue bag thing..?

DeniseT said...

Funny, I was just reading about the blue bag idea. Looks like it was just a pilot program. But I haven't been able to find any info on how it went. When I lived in Chicago, we had a blue bag program. It was very easy to use. It has since been discontinued, I think due to city budget cuts. Shame...