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Garbage in, garbage out
By Mr. Stupid | April 1, 2008
My family produces a lot of garbage. From the pee-soaked diapers to the packaging around the Little Petshop shit, we produce more than our fair share of garbage.
And now the town wants us to pay for it.
My town is changing the way it handles trash. In a few months we will switch over to a Pay As You Throw (PAYT) system which means that you pay a cost per bag to throw away your trash. In the past, we just bought an annual dump sticker and that was it.
13-gallon bags that you can use at the dump will cost $.65 and 30-gallon bags will cost $1.20.
Well, right there a little Stupid math will tell you that the 30-gallon bags are a better deal.
vs.
1.20 / 30 = $.04 per gallon
I like PAYT. I want PAYT. According to my town’s study, PAYT increases recycling by an average of 47%. That sounds Stupidly good to me, so I am embracing PAYT. I’ve already started practicing, and trying to figure out Stupid ways to become more efficient with my trash disposal habits.
Here are some ideas:
- Recycle more (duh) — The dump takes newspaper and glass, corrugated cardboard, all manner of boxes and paper-based goods, plus all plastics labelled 1 through 7 (a number in a triangle of arrows is usually on the plastic somewhere). They also take scrap metal, leaves, and lawn trimmings without making you pay. To recycle more, it helps to understand what you can and cannot recycle, so Idea #1 is to make sure I know everything that can be recycled.
- Stomp! — I should be able to compress my trash down pretty well. I am looking at this patent and it’s just a trash can with a hole in the top that you can put your foot through.
- Freecycle — People too cheap to buy anything often settle for crap. And crap is what they’ll get on Freecycle.
- Donate EVERY-fucking-THING I can’t Freecycle (there’s that tmesis I promised you) — I suspect that my town’s consigment shops and Salvation Army will be overrun with donations once PAYT takes effect. I might have to go out of town to donate the more dubious items, such as broken toys, but I will find a way. You should see the shit that piles up next to donation boxes now; they’re already filled with detritus that wouldn’t belong on the Isle of Misfit Toys. Wait until PAYT.
- Burn — Well, I wouldn’t burn — I don’t have a big enough space on my lawn that I don’t mind destroying, but I will need to find out when my neighbor plans on doing burns. And then burn my shit with him. Double benefit of not having to pay for the burning permit.
- Bury — We’ve got an 80 pound dog and another 30 pounder who can’t live forever. Pets are bulky and tough to stomp down. I’ll bury them rather than chuck them. Hey, the grim reality is that I ain’t paying for a burial plot at some pet semetary, nor am I going to put ashes on my mantle. When dogs go to heaven, they leave their bodies behind for me to clean up.
- Leave the trash in the car — When I have trash in my car, sometimes I bring it into the house when I get home from work. Cups, wrappers, condoms, whatever might collect on my backseat. Now I’ll just have to be more diligent about cleaning my car when I fill up at the gas station.
- Spring cleaning before PAYT takes effect — This one’s pretty obvious, but I only have a few months before the trash train has left the station, so I have to make a point of doing the Spring cleaning in the Spring this year.
- Bring the party to them — Mrs. Stupid and I hate entertaining, so this one isn’t hard… but the idea is that when there’s a birthday or other celebration in which gifts are exchanged, we should try hard to have the party elsewhere. Gifts beget garbage.
- Throw the dog shit in the woods — I don’t know why I’ve been doing this, but whenever I clean the dog shit off my lawn (about once every two months), I bag it and throw it in the dump. It’s usually a shit bag the size of a baskeball. I can stop doing that, I suppose. It breaks down pretty well, and there’s a lot of area in my back yard to throw it.
Ideas I decided against. I decided not to pursue the following strategies to reduce trash.
- Cloth instead of disposable — Yeah, right. I may be Stupid, but I’m not an imbecile.
- Compost — This just isn’t how I roll. Besides, try composting in the winter. It’s no fun trudging a bucket of fresh muck out to the bin in the snow, but it’s even less fun smelling it until the snow melts.
- Cash in my cans — At $.05 a whack, it costs more in breath to recycle aluminum cans than I can earn at a recycling center. The dump takes these, anyway, they just don’t give you anything for them. Besides, Mrs. Stupid and I drink our beer from a bottle.
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May 30th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Seems as if someone is falling into the familiar role of scared of change. Its more about changing the way we live and teaching our children, and evebntually thier children to step away from our throw everything away and forget about it mentality. Have you ever visited a dump site or a recycle center? Are you afraid to face the truth or change your ways. Is laziness an excuse? I don’t think people need to hear the negative and uneducated comments about this program, what they really need to hear is how it can change their community and even their lives.