So the news bins ain't so bad... unless heaven forbid, you park it slightly askew or leave the lid open. This week our friend put his bin out in the morning at the curb like a good citizen but awhile later when the garbage truck came along, he noticed they did not stop at his house. He went outside to look and the lid was open on his bin and the garbage all still in it. He ran down a few houses to catch up to the truck and asked the driver what was going on... the driver said "your bin lid was open, we can't pick it up if the lid is open". Our friend has no idea how it happened, like if it was wind, or someone else threw something in there and didn't close it, or what but it was shut when he left it at the curb. So - the driver would not pick it up. End of story. Our friend asked him why he can't get out of his truck and close the lid and then push the button to pick it up (mechanical arm trucks, I should explain). The driver said he is not allowed. What the heck is this anyway? So now if word gets out (oops my bad, here the word is getting out), the new fun for pranksters would be to run around town simply flipping the lid of these bins open and it could cause chaos with no one's garbage getting picked up. That is just plain stupid. We are paying higher fees but the drivers can't get out and close a lid. It's not allowed. Lovely!
Another point to note is that our local paper reported today that the city was thinking of, yet again, buying us more bins (with our money of course) for composting but charging over $7 a month extra for that. Apparently at least one of our alderman complained and said the people won't be happy with another charge for trying to do something RIGHT for the environment, so they are going back to the drawing board to think up some other fun idea for collecting our yard waste. Meanwhile, the people across the street raked up their leaves after a big wind storm within 24 hours and there are 15 bags of leaves still sitting in the back alley, which the city refuses to pick up.
Going green costs consumers more money. And it's only going to get worse apparently.
Surprise surprise, I walked down a back alley to work this morning, not long after the garbage truck went through, and 4 bins were far from the fences (after the machine put them down) and 3 were 3-4 feet away from the fence and one was in the middle of the alley. Thing is, people could get tickets for not leaving enough clearance even though the truck did it, and the people are probably at work. I saw one other bin with its lid open and sure enough, the truck did not empty it. In my workplace's crescent there was another bin with the lid partially open and it was not emptied either --- this is going to be a big thorn in people's sides. It might be something stupid to complain about, but it's another example of people making decisions for citizens and not really thinking it through.
ReplyDeleteAnother issue - people that live in crescents... they are parking the required distance from the bins, but are having to park at a 90 degree angle rather than lengthwise along the side walks.. guess what happens then? The trucks still can't reach the bins because the arm isn't long enough and the trucks can't get between the vehicles. So what happens with that? I can see this little idea crashing hard soon. Waste of tax payers money yet again??