Trash talk for a better world

Rainbow Disposal is proposing big changes to our trash pickup system. Knowing the cantankerous nature of some people in our community, we’ll bet that the transition to a new pickup system won’t be universally popular. But it’s the right way to go.

Currently, there is no need to sort our trash for curbside pickup. We can put out as much as we want and Rainbow Disposal comes by every week to haul it away. There is no incentive to sort our trash into green waste, recyclables or real trash, and no reason to think about how we might reduce the volume of trash that we generate.

Things are different elsewhere. Residents of most towns now have three separate wheeled containers that are provided by their refuse-hauling companies. One is for green waste, which is grass clippings and yard trimmings and even vegetable and fruit peelings. Recyclables of all kinds -- glass, some plastics, aluminum, cardboard and paper -- go into the second can. The third is for nontoxic and nonrecyclable materials, the real trash. In San Diego, they get trash pickup every week, with green waste pickup alternating with recyclables pickup every other week.

Our friends in neighboring communities complain good-naturedly about how they create more green waste than can be hauled away some weeks. They have to store it until the next green waste pickup day. Or they might complain about how a party filled up their recyclables container with beverage containers. We don’t think these are really adequate reasons for not moving to the home-sorting system. It’s good for people to think about the amount of trash that they generate, which is the real problem that needs solving.

Some of the disadvantages of this new system include the size and number of trash containers that must be stored, and the inconvenience of hauling these larger and heavier containers to and from curbside. Although the containers will have wheels, the 95-gallon containers will be heavy and difficult for some people to handle if the containers are filled. Fortunately, there are options of having 65-gallon containers or 35-gallon containers, or mixing sizes. Hey, at least Rainbow will provide these new containers for free, and you can get rid of your old trash containers.

The biggest change is that residents will have to start thinking about what can be recycled and what can’t. At our house, we already separate newspapers, glass and plastic bottles, and aluminum cans, so this won’t be a big change for us. We already compost almost all of our household green waste and a large portion of our yard green waste, so having a separate green waste pickup won’t be a problem for us either. However, we do throw away a lot of plastic and Styrofoam items. With the new system, we’ll be asked to wash these things before putting them into the recyclable container.

One of the biggest improvements with the new pickup system will be new trucks. Rainbow now uses diesel-burning trucks, but will replace them all with trucks fueled by natural gas.

We’re predicting that there will be opposition from some residents to the change because it will require more work on their part. People tend to resist change, especially if they perceive negative consequences. But we’ll all get used to it. From an environmental perspective, this is a wonderful and exciting change that will encourage more recycling and reduce what goes to landfills.

According to the Container Recycling Institute, Americans have a poor record for recycling, and it is getting worse by the year. Recycling of PET plastic beverage containers -- the kind of containers that bottled drinking water and soda comes in -- has gone down from 38% recycled in 1994 to only 20% in 2002. The other 80% goes to the landfill. Americans are drinking more bottled water all the time. Use of PET containers increased three-fold during that same period, while the number of pounds that were recycled remained nearly constant.

The percent of aluminum cans that are recycled nationwide has gone down from 65% in 1992 to less than 50% in 2002. Since aluminum cans became popular in 1972, one trillion cans have been thrown into the trash instead of being recycled. This is 17.5 million tons of aluminum, valued at today’s prices at $21 billion. We need to stop throwing away such valuable recyclables.

Our trash will still get sorted by hand at Rainbow’s Materials Recycling Facility on Nichols Street, but only the recyclables will need to be hand-sorted. Green waste can go directly to composting. The really gross waste like dirty diapers, cat litter, dog waste and meat garbage can go directly to the landfill with no need for people to pick through it. Working conditions for the people at the recycling facility should improve with the new system, and it will undoubtedly be better for their health to have only relatively clean loads of newspapers, cardboard, bottles, cans and plastic to sort through.

The key to success will be resident education and cooperation. We’re in favor of the changeover, currently expected to take place in 2007, because it should result in more material being recycled. But the system will work only if residents actually separate their trash into what can be reused and what can’t. We hope that you’ll support the changeover, because our landfills are filling up.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY can be reached at [email protected].

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