Here’s an aggravating local news item. What they’re saying here is that up until now, all you had to do was put out the special trash in the magical trash bins and it would be taken away and made into rainbows and unicorns. (As if that petty tyranny wasn’t bad enough.) But now, that’s not sufficient for our local despots. Now you’re going to be commanded to wash the special trash before you put it out, lest it all be earmarked for destroying the planet, which will be your fault, you despicable scum, instead of gifting the glorious collective all those awe-inspiring rainbows and unicorns.
Every level of government is crushing liberty and has been for decades. How much, at this point, will a presidential election change the direction of the destruction?
30 replies on “Wash the Trash, Peon!”
In 1990, I stayed at the home of a business owner in eastern NJ. Over breakfast he and his wife were lamenting that the county was mandating that they seperate their trash into 2 different containers – one for trash and one for this idea of recycling. He as not too happy about the fact that the county not only mandated that they separate their trash, but wash the containers clean first. 1990. We’ve been putting up with this crap for 30 years.
In Drought-I-Fornia, we don’t have water to spare. Santa Cruz is a seaside county and with no real reservoirs, and infrequent rain, we suck the water from the ground. The problem with that is if you suck too hard, you suck sea water into your aquifer and when that happens, it’s over. No fixing that.
Santa Cruz is famous for a county full of Karens who water shame you if you are seen watering plants, washing your car, drinking lemonade….I think we invented water shaming with our near constant state of drought. But the county still demands we waste water rinsing out the little bits of pasta sauce from the glass jar, or pie crust from that aluminum tin. No one here in Left of Left Santa Cruz can make up their minds. Clean your recycles or save water.
And no, I don’t wash my recycle-ables. None of my recycles can be traced back to my house once their co-mingled with my neighbors glass and cans inside that huge garbage truck. That is, unless they take up DNA or fingerprinting at the county landfill…….
The incessant public service announcements in CA – conserve water, conserve energy, be prepared for black- and brown-outs – are crazy-making. I can listen to the radio only as long as it takes to open my laptop and find BW or DW or Rush. I’m so glad you’re all out there!
How anyone can not rush out of California right now confounds me every time I hear the state mentioned.
Home (capital gains tax I’d have to pay), kids, never being able to come back, where to go …. Can’t disagree, though.
I’d be willing to abandon it all and start over as a nomad with nothing to escape that oppressive hellhole.
Deborah, how about those nauseating “First 5 of California” spots where the radio is telling you how important it is to read to your kids, hold them, love them, pick them up. Oh and “Don’t smoke in the car, Don’t smoke in the house, Sing to your kids, Do things with your kids….
I shudder to think that there are idiots out there who are NOT doing this, but then once they hear the radio spot from the Ad Council, think “Oh My…I’ve been doing this all wrong! What an idiot! Thanks Ad Council and First Five of California for showing me the error of my ways!”
Exactly! The “ads” are SO offensive!
My opinion of government is, Get the hell out of my way!
My opinion of government is, “I’m not touching your hairy legs.”
Move over, Biden
One of the rules for my local curbside recycling (which thankfully is optional) is that the items must not include food waste. Whenever I clean or rinse a food container for recycling, I wonder how much energy is wasted washing such items. Treating the water at the city treatment facility, heating the water in my house, using detergent, rinsing, rinsing, rinsing, running the garbage disposal, and then of course city sewage treatments, it’s got to add up to more than the value of the item being recycled.
So more often than not I put the item in the garbage, not the recycling. And I put lightly-soiled items in the recycling because it’s hard to believe they don’t wash all that stuff anyway when it arrives at the recycling facility.
I’m a conservationist, not an environmentalist, and I’m all for recycling when it makes economic sense. Which is to say, for aluminum cans, some paper products, and not much else. The rest of it is mostly a scam.
Recycle if it makes sense. Put it in the trash if it doesn’t. Exactly!
Put it all in the trash, then treat dumps as mines. Consolidate the extraction of the valuable stuff there using thousands of man-hours instead of wasting millions of man-hours of individual citizens doing that work. Economy of scale FTW.
Curbside recycling is nothing more than another step in tyrannical control of individuals.
I like having it as an option. It is convenient. Without it, we would probably save aluminum cans and possibly paper and take them to the recycling center ourselves. Without curbside recycling I would make no effort to recycle plastics.
“Required” recycling would be an entirely different thing.
May I ask what state you’re in?
I’m in Pennsylvania. We have a statewide recycling mandate with local implementations.
I don’t see the advantage in individual recycling, mandated or not, except when selling your recyclables for cash. At least then you get something out of it. But to have millions of individuals spending millions of hours and immeasurable resources doing a job that could be far more efficiently done as I describe above – treating dumps and landfills as mines and having dedicated workers extract the useful material or, perhaps better, screening the material as it arrives – is just plain insanity.
Texas!
Michael, California puts a container tax on bottles and aluminum cans. So I pay a nickel or so when I purchase the item. It was to encourage me to recycle, the idea was that I’d save the can and bottles, and take them to a recycler to get my money back. But over the years, few do this. So the State of California get’s a nickel on every can or bottle sold. I just saw my property tax bill and there is a big chunk for County Sanitation – Landfill costs. I also have to pay for curbside pickup and a portion of that cost to me is Landfill Charge. On top of that, if I want to take a load in my pickup down to the dump, I’m charged a minimum of 25 bucks.
A deposit charge, a property tax, a curbside pickup charge and a drop off charge. Dumps ARE goldmines.
A nickel a container, in California, daily, weekly, annually. I can’t imagine how many nickels are collected every year from us.
I also just looked at the Calfornia CRV program for the last 10 years. California annually collect a tax of 5 cents for under 24 ounce containers, and 10 cents for over 24 ounce containers.
Each year over 8 billion containers are subject to either the nickel or dime recycling tax.
California receives annual CRV revenues of $430 million dollars . For the last 10 years, it’s collected $4.229 Billion Dollars.
Here’s the link if anyone can’t fall asleep tonight.
https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/Docs/Web/117417
The dump that was once near me is gone. On the plus side, the city now picks up most anything twice a year curbside. On the minus side, stuff can sit in front of people’s homes for MONTHS.
It sounds to me that Easton has just redefined the big blue recycle bins as extra curbside trash bins for residents. Now residents have more room for trash in their pre-paid bins.
One of my many jobs over the years was teaching in the Allentown PA school district. At the end of each day, the janitors would come around to empty the trash and recycling bins. They would pour the trash into big trash tubs on wheels, then pour the “recycling” right in after it.
The whole thing is a sham.
Some years ago us dentists were required to buy a special color (red) trash bag and special tags to affix to them for all our garbage, which was considered contaminated medical waste. After doing this for some time, I noticed the “special” bags were dumped right into the trash truck with everything else. Needless to say nobody buys those special bags anymore. Just a scheme to pad the pockets of whoever was selling the stupid red bags.
Such a reprehensible requirement. This is why I so often say that I hate bureacrats and their bloody rules.
“It’s for the children!” is a common mantra. Well old, creepy men like Joe Biden also like children — especially when they are rubbing his hairy legs. That always sounded like the words of a perverted old man looking to take advantage of innocents.
Was it that? Or was it someone filling the artificial need created out of thin air by another tyrannical government mandate? I can’t see blaming the bag makers unless they were giving kickbacks for getting the mandate issued.
I can’t telll you the number of times I have seen that with curbside pickup. One truck pulls up, both the trash bin and the recycling bin go in and it then drives off. But they could fine me if I didn’t separate the recyclables. So I have to waste my time separating or some local “Karen” will set the trash Nazis on me. Gotta love the leftist mind!!
Bit of a side note: My next door neighbor is just such a deranged Karen. And when I say deranged, I mean it literally.
I live in a townhouse. When next-door Karen (not her real name) gets angry, she starts with screaming. I can hear her coming through our shared wall like she’s standing in the room next to me. She’s spent half her life screaming at people (mostly me) living in or just passing through the neighborhood, usually for no particular – certainly no justifiable – reason I could discern. I’ve never done anything to her – I try my best to ignore her existence – but it doesn’t help.
Shortly after she moved in, I called the cops on her for a noise complaint. When they got there, one told me, “Karen? Yeah, we know all about Karen.”
To relate to your comment, she used to ignore recycling and just put it in the regular trash. Then she started putting it out in front of my house, putting me at risk for a fine. Even switched to the same trash bags I use. I confronted her about it and she called me a “shitty neighbor” for not letting her do it. She did stop, though.
She quieted down over the last few months because somehow she got herself a simp “boyfriend” that she bullies. Lately, though, she has started the screaming again.
If I could afford to, I’d move.
I feel your pain, sir! However, sometimes living in a van down by the river can be a reasonable option! 😉
I reserve that option for when I can’t take it any more. lol
Good grief! What will those despots think of next? Whatever they come up with I’m sure won’t be unicorns and rainbows. VOTE TRUMP 2020!