The Seattle City Clowncil wants to reduce waste:
City leaders are looking at ways to bump recycling and composting rates from the current 44 percent up to 72 percent -- a goal that could be hit by 2025 if sweeping changes were embraced, according to a study released in April.Among the proposed changes:
* Require disposal of food waste in yard waste containersHere are some of my own modest proposals:* Ban Styrofoam restaurant food containers and plastic shopping bags
* Ban newsprint. Most people get their news from the Internet now anyway. Think of all the trees would be saved in a a newspaperless world, not to mention the gasoline currently used by delivery trucks.
* Forbid city employees from driving solo to/from work or to work-related meetings. Require them to carpool, walk, bike, take the bus or telecommute.
* Ban junk mail from political campaigns. Start with City Clowncil and Mayoral races.
Your turn.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 06, 2007 11:02 PM | Email ThisSomewhat less seriously:
* Hire young men in brown shirts to conduct random inspections of trash receptacles all over the city, and smash in the windows of any home or business whose receptacle fails to comply with the 72% requirement.
* Stop collecting trash altogether. Announce that it is everyone's civic duty to find innovative new ways of producing no trash whatsoever, and the fate of the world depends on it.
The only thing you're missing from this one is providing the proper incentive for it to work - plus, there's already at least one "clowncil" member who should be solidly behind the proposal!
Posted by: Ironman on June 7, 2007 06:42 AMThe PI Editorial pages ran a piece recently called "Global Warming: Raise gas taxes." It was predictable and provided nothing new nor unexpected from the PI Editorial Board. On the upside, it doesn't appear to have been written by D. Parvaz, as there were no quasi-adolescent jokes about Dick Cheney or words like "dude" or "skank" or "wuss'" anywhere in the copy.
The editorial encourages a substantial increase in the gas tax, in part because America's "addiction to oil is poisoning the environment."
I proposed the PI advocate a crippling tax on newpapers, citing a research study that looked at the full range of industrial processes needed to supply a Berkeley resident with the New York Times (print edition) for one year vs. digital delivery:
Global Warming? Raise taxes on newpapers
My Waste Management re-cycle behemoth cruises up and down my alley and street four the six times every thursday. Kinda non-green in spite of its paint job.
Where's the incentive? What's the reward?
Civic pride?? Feels more like civic embarassment to me.
Can't we find a better way to help Mayor Nickels prop his head up high at the next national Mayor's meeting?
If the "green movement" is really going to sustain itself, a system of true incentives and rewards needs to be invented.
When we conserve water, eletricity, gasoline and reduce trash outputs, the governments raise the costs associated with those things since they aren't selling or taxing enough. Rewards absent, penalties created.
Then we hire the new enforcers like the trash police, and viola! A triple penalty system via increased taxes.
A final tidbit. A one square mile by 200 foot deep pit would be large enough to accomodate ALL of the waste produced by the entire U.S. for the next 500 years. I'm looking into real estate on the "dry side".
Posted by: Bart Cannon on June 7, 2007 08:15 AMI personally really like to recycle because the cost to recycle is much, much less than the cost to dump in the garbage and increase those costs.
But, if it doesn't go anywhere?
Posted by: swatter on June 7, 2007 08:29 AM"More than 10% recyclables in the garbage can result in a fine."
I will be sure to partition off 10% of my dumpster and throw any recyclables in there. I wouldn't want to make the trash nazis job more difficult than it is.
How about banning unsolicited snail mail? It seems that we get enought of this crap a year to save several hundred trees.
Let stop supplying footing the bill for car transportation for overpaid, overfed, and underworked politicians. Mayor Quimby could stand to lose a few pounds anyway.
Posted by: NW Denizen on June 7, 2007 08:54 AMmonies collected subsidize free ice cream and party ice for high income taxpayers & boaters.
Posted by: jimmie-howya-doin on June 7, 2007 01:53 PMI did a fair amount of research on this back in 2004. I have a large file on the topic, but I was admittedly writing from recollection. I also recall that the actual figures were nearly impossible to determine, even when this was all fresh for me.
There are two re-cycle contractors in Seattle. Rabanco and Waste Management. The re-cycle contract for my part of town is with Waste Management. Something in the neighborhood of 6 million dollars per year. The re-cycle cost recovery was well below the expense.
I advocate re-cycling from a personal emotional basis. I straighten out used nails and strip the glassine windows from letters I receive. I work at home. I use electricity mostly during the early morning hours when it is evaporating from the storage capacitors. My complaint is that not everyone needs to pay the city to heal a green neurosis such as the one I suffer from.
Posted by: Bart Cannon on June 7, 2007 02:57 PMYou are funny. But then I'm biased in that regard...
Back in the day folks in Seattle would burn trash.
We still do it out in the country.
How 'bout we end all subsidies to the oil and energy and packaging industries? If we do that, we can expect them to pass all of their costs through to the consumer instead of artificially increasing sales do to taxpayer subsidized prices. Gas, electricity and packaging costs will all go up, and this will cause consumers to decide whether to conserve or not, depending on the cost increase. This would cause more people to opt for public transit voluntarily, which should be totally funded by rider fees and charitable contributions... This would leave more money for road construction which would reduce congestion and save a non-renewable resource: commuters' time and lives.
Hmmm. Politicians won't like that because then their campaign finance bribes from big corporations would dry up...
How 'bout privatizing garbage pickup, so that there is competition? This would open up more collection service options and billing schemes, such as charging by the pound of garbage, instead of a fixed fee for pickup. This would give some people a market-based incentive to reduce waste.
Hmmm. Politicians won't like that because then their campaign finance bribes from garbage collection unions would dry up...
Turns out the causes of most of our problems are from the government... We, the voters asked the government to provide us with these programs. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on June 8, 2007 10:27 AMAllow the market to work, and the environment will be much better off.
It is in societies with central control, like China, the frmr Soviet Union where the environment gets trashed the most.
But our City Council will probably follow the socialistic path instead.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on June 8, 2007 10:31 AM