collection system imaginable. Every day at least three
different behemoth trucks comes up my alleyway to
collect the garbage from a single property. As the
trucks have gotten larger, they have inflicted more
damage on the curbs and roadway. They're now too large
to navigate the alleyway entrance without going over
the curb onto the boulevard lawn.
In the past I've advocated a zone system whereby the
city competitively bid a contract for one company to
pick up in a given neighborhood. This would certainly
cut down the number of redundant trips required to
collect garbage in the city. I can understand why the
haulers don't want this but not why homeowners don't.
But we could do much, much better. I just returned
from a trip to Switzerland where they have a much
different system. In the town where I stayed, garbage
can only be disposed of in authorized plastic bags
which citizens buy from the town. There are different
bags for different types of garbage and the price of
the bags reflects the cost of disposing of the garbage
in them. This system has the advantage of making
people pay according to how much, and what kind of,
waste they generate. It creates an incentive to cut
down on waste.
Combining the paid bag system with a competitively bid
zone contract pick-up system would be a far more
sensible, efficient way to collect garbage and reduce
the damage being done by having way too many trucks
running around polluting the air, creating noise and
destroying curbs and lawns.
Only the clout of the haulers who benefit from our
inefficiency stands in the way of an improvement in
our quality of life.
Charlie Swope
Ward 1