Here in Seattle, the City Commissars are such firm believers in the Religion of Recycling, that they want to force the people to recycle for the hell of it, even when recycling is economically foolish:
Seattle needs to move to this new frontier to achieve its recycling goals, says Mayor Greg Nickels, who has proposed that the city launch a food-waste-recycling program by 2005.unfortunately:
Recycling food waste, "strictly speaking, is not cost-effective," said Tim Croll, community-services director for Seattle Public Utilities. The bottom line is that recycling food waste may cost more than putting it in landfills — as much as $2.8 million a year, according to city estimates.and preserving landfill space shouldn't be anybody's highest priority either, because:
Seattle officials admit the city is at no risk of exhausting its landfill space for decades.Sacrificing food waste and money to the God of Recycling is Seattle's version of the hecatomb. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 30, 2003 12:03 PM
OK, how about this? Establish an Official City Of Seattle Hog Farm. It can go in the middle of 1 of the snooty upscale neighborhoods, or maybe right there near City Hall. The Official Food Waste Recycling Trucks can dump the slops daily into the Official Seattle Hog Farm Hog Trough so the Official Seattle Swine can gobble down the garbage while it's nice & fresh. When the porkers get good & fat from digesting all those free recycled calories, then the Seattle City Fathers & Mothers can hold an Official City Of Seattle Whole Hog Pork Barbecue, free to city residents & guests, with the Mayor carving & the City Commissioners serving. Yum.
-- Alan Cole, McLean, Virginia, USA.
Posted by: Alan Cole on December 30, 2003 12:20 PMIt couldn't be that the Dear Liberals in Seattle city government are so burdened with guilt for citizen prosperity that they wish to siphon off as much of it as possible with contrived PC efforts, could it? Like Link light rail, and Sounder, and the Monorail - all of which are touted as public benefits by the politicians, and feel like confiscations to the commuters who don't follow those exquisitely limited, automotively subsidized routes.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on December 30, 2003 03:11 PMI think I read in the last couple days that we here in Culyfornia are going to make it illegal to take recyclables out of state (depriving us of our revenue? how could that be the reason)
sorry can't find the link - maybe it was on lucianne or rought & tumble
Posted by: irishlass on December 30, 2003 11:45 PMMadness, just madness.
Posted by: Gary B on December 31, 2003 07:57 AMYou are likely correct here, I'll assume that you are, however, have you ever visited a landfill site? and looked at what it is? Does anyone not think that that utter shit and garbage does not all leak back into the ground water tables? and that you don't eventually shower in and drink that shit?
Does anyone here want to live in any kind of close proximity to a landfill or want a new one built near where you live?
Posted by: Mike on December 31, 2003 06:18 PM> Does anyone here want to live in any kind of close proximity to a landfill or want a new one built near where you live?
If if the above premise is true, it's not particularly relevant in the US. We could easily put all landfills miles away from the nearest residences.
The only reason anyone in the US worries about landfill space is that we've made a purely political decision to restrict them.
Posted by: Andy Freeman on December 31, 2003 10:59 PMI believe most current land fills are constructed in a fashion that prevents ground water contamination.
Posted by: Gary B on January 1, 2004 12:09 PM