Tag Archives: Headlines

Solutions

Solutions

Organizing for a Single Trash Hauler

If you have too many garbage trucks using the streets and alleys in your neighborhood like we do, consider organizing your neighbors to agree on one hauler.

Political Will

Thanks to a change in state law, cities are now free to create zones for trash haulers that make some sense. Ask your city councilmember to take action.

Organics Recycling

There are a few different ways you can recycle your kitchen scraps to significantly reduce waste and build healthy soil that doesn’t rely on toxic chemicals, yet another aspect of an insane system that needs to go away.

Recycling

It’s 2013. Over 20 years ago, in school my nephew Joe was learning about why it’s important to recycle. Today, we’re still arguing over bottle deposits, which are proven to increase recycling rates. In the meantime, an assortment of organizations is devoted to telling us what Joe learned when he was ten.

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What’s Crazy

Too Many Garbage Trucks

truck Five, six, seven and more garbage trucks using a single alley every week is insane! While this is common here in St. Paul, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Flushing Money Down the Toilet

truck Whether it’s businesses that can’t run as efficiently as ethically and environmentally possible because your san man is negotiating a checker-board garbage route instead of sailing through blocks of consolidated customers, or their customers who will pick up the tab for the inflated cost of service, who has even five dollars to flush down the toilet?

Wasting Resources

recycle It’s insane to entomb resources in a landfill only to use even more resources to extract them later. While landfill mining and reclamation (LFMR) has its uses, it solves problems we can avoid now that we know better.

Forgetting Basic Skills

compost

Nothing illustrates the insanity of using limited resources to haul yet even more resources to a landfill better than an apple core. Most kitchen waste can be easily composted at home and used to build healthy soil, a basic need and the foundation of wealth.

Polluting the Earth

Putting organics in landfills causes serious environmental problems, as this video from Metro Vancouver explains.

What’s Sane

  • In a perfect world, there is no waste. For example, sane systems are designed such that the by-product of one process becomes the feedstock of another.
  • Even though zero waste might not be possible right away, we still aim for it.
  • We handle the waste we do generate responsibly.
  • We pay a fair price for a fair service. Not more. Not less.
  • We keep what works, get rid of what wouldn’t make sense to a fourth-grader, and invent what’s needed.