On 1/22/04 4:21 PM, "Dan McConnell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Do you know for certain that those people were not recycling because it was >> "too much of a hassle" to source-separate? Did you ask them or are you >> presuming that because you obviously think it's a hassle? > > No, I didn't presume they were quite blatant about it. Read again what I said. I did not ask if you presumed that they were not recycling. I asked if you might have been presuming their reason or motivation for not recycling. As I pointed out, there are others besides not wanting to deal with the hassle of it. >> Participation might very well rise if we switched to single-stream. But >> that's not necessarily the point if the quality of our collected materials >> goes down. If switching to single-stream also results in an increase in >> screwing up, as I've seen and heard about in some communities where >> single-stream is used (like my cousin in Brooklyn Center who told me about >> how my aunt keeps goofing up since they switched), then the uptick in >> participation might not be worth it. > > No the quality of our materials and the resulting revenue are side issues, > reducing the amount of material land filled is the point. *sigh* Apparently I did not do an adequate job of explaining this before, so I'll try again, using an example. Let's say you're going to the market to shop for produce. You come upon the apple bin. You look them over and you see some that look absolutely wonderful and you see others that a bruised, maybe scraped, whatever. They look like crap. Which are you going to choose? The good-looking ones. As is everyone else. What ends up happening to the cruddy-looking ones? They end up out back in a dumpster or a compost pile because nobody wants them. Recycling works kind of the same way. The reason we separate out recyclable stuff is because we can use it again to make something else. However, no matter what that material happens to be, paper, glass, or whatever, it competes with other collected materials as well as never-before-used materials (called virgin materials in the solid waste and manufacturing industries). Now - if we don't place enough emphasis on achieving a high quality with our recyclables, they're not going to compete very well with the cities that do make that effort. They're also not going to compete well with virgin materials. The result is nobody's going to want them. And when that happens, guess where the stuff ends up? In a landfill. Even though you had your big single-sort cart and you separated your cans, bottles and paper from your trash, nobody wants your cluttered mix of cans, bottles and paper because the quality is so poor. And while there are laws that mandate collection of recyclables, there are few laws that mandate using those collected materials. So competition is something we have to worry about when we look at the whole picture of how recycling works and not just our little role in how we separate our trash. That's why when Dee Long mentioned what her husband was told about Minneapolis only does separation for the feel-good aspect, I said that was backwards. Cities and counties that take the single-sort shortcut are doing so because they're not paying attention to the whole recycling picture. They're just looking at providing an easy way for their residents to feel good because they're "recycling." They're not recycling. They're playing a part in the whole recycling process - which involves collecting the materials, using the materials to make new stuff and then buying the new stuff made from those recycled materials. You cannot have recycling without all three of these parts. > So you agree that it is a hassle yet you don't think that making the process > simpler is a good thing? No, I don't. It should be pretty clear by now, but the reason I don't is because I don't think the perceived convenience of single-sort is worth screwing up the rest of the whole recycling process. Minneapolis has a system that works and works well. When city staff recommended staying with the current system for the next contract, they made the right choice. Anybody who cannot see that at this point, well, I'm sorry, but you just don't get it. Mark Snyder Windom Park REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
