It’s time to talk trash. It isn’t reserved for sports or neighborhood disputes. It’s serious stuff. Where I grew up there was trash and there was garbage. That’s all. Garbage went into a can out by the garage and trash went to the dump. Once a week the garbage man collected the garbage and every week or so people took their trash to the dump. It was easier then. It was more enjoyable then, too.
Radio stations received dozens of new records each week. Do
you remember records? DJs at WDEV listened to the records and decided which were
good enough to play on air, and which should go to the dump. We waited in
anticipation each Saturday morning for the station’s highest-rated show: “Music
to Go to The Dump By.” That was when they played the records they were
sending to the dump. The music was awful;
we loved it!
SB 1383 was one of 770 new laws that took effect in
California on January 1, 2022. Seven-hundred-seventy new laws in one year make
the argument for less government, but no, somebody had to mess with the garbage
vs trash vs organics in our lives. Not much has changed since childhood. We’re
back to taking the garbage out again. They don’t want us to use garbage
disposals anymore. Now we must compost. It’s the law. Someone proposed that we should
consider composting dead people in the future.
We have had black, blue, and green disposal cans for some
time. Black cans for trash went out every week. The blue can for recyclables
went out every week. The Green can for organics, i.e., grass, leaves, branches,
and the like went out every other week. The compost law changed the cycle. The
black still goes out every week. The green can now goes out every week, and we must
remember to take out the blue can every other week. If we are supposed to
recycle a lot, don’t you think the blue can should be full every week and the
black can with trash nearly empty and not worth taking out every week? Nope! Now
it’s the green that must go out every week. We must compost.
Here is the thing, though. Now we must always have a small garbage can in the kitchen, lined with a compostable bag. When it is
full it is taken out to the garbage can; sorry, green organic can. Since we
don’t have that much garbage, most weeks, that big green organic can goes out
to the street with one very small compostable bag in it. They, you know who
they are, tell us that they don’t want compostable garbage in the landfill
dumps. The logic is elusive.
The big green can is picked up once a week by a big blue
truck with mechanical arms that grabs it and raises it to the top of the truck
and empties it. That truck gets two to three miles per gallon if it was built
before 2014, or seven miles per gallon after that. They, you know who they
are, tell us that the average truck makes 1,000 stops per day and drives 130
miles per day. Those numbers seem high and maybe even unrealistic, but they
published the numbers, so let’s go with them. All that adds up to 40+ gallons
of fuel at $4.90 per gallon; that’s about $1,000 per week. The driver earns $30
per hour or $1,200 per week. Let’s assume that a new garbage truck sells for
$300,000 and it lasts ten years; that’s $580 per week. So, that little green bag
of garbage in the big green can picked up by the big blue truck costs nearly
three thousand dollars weekly. That doesn’t include the costs of the new
composting sites to which the little green bag is delivered. An engineer or an accountant
might find fault with the math, but it is within the conceptual margin of error,
so I’m sticking with it.
I’m the first to suggest that we do all we can to save
the planet. Let’s get rid of the smog caused by internal combustion engines.
Let’s stop using coal to produce electricity. Let’s put solar panels on all the
new houses and find a way to make EV cars cheaper. I’m flummoxed about why
compostable garbage can’t be put in the trash can. It really won’t hurt
the landfill, and it won’t require starting up a compost department staffed
with more people and more technology.
Somehow, I get the feeling that a well-meaning person
decided to use a backyard composter one day and then decided that everyone
should do the same. That’s how so many new laws begin. Somebody gets an itch and
suddenly you have seven-hundred-seventy new laws in one year, many of which belong
on the trash heap of …
Nostalgia has a strong grip on people. I kind of miss “Music
to Go to The Dump By.”
