Big Brother In Your Garbage Cans
from the rfid-me dept
Reader Stan alerted us to a recent report out of Cleveland, where the city will apparently be placing RFID chips in recycling bins to monitor whether or not you've been a good little earth saver lately. The way it works, apparently, is that the system will monitor whether or not you bring your recycling bin to the curb, and if you haven't in a while, "a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables" on the assumption that if you're not recycling, you're probably throwing stuff out. After checking those trash cans for recyclables, if more than 10 percent recyclable material is found, a $100 fine could be assessed to the home owner.Not surprisingly, the reasoning for this has a lot more to do with money than saving the earth's resources:
Recycling is good for the environment and the city's bottom line, officials said. Cleveland pays $30 a ton to dump garbage in landfills, but earns $26 a ton for recyclables.While perhaps it's a good thing to see something "good" like recycling line up with a way for the city to earn extra money, it still seems pretty intrusive to monitor how often people recycle.
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Filed Under: cleveland, garbage cans, rfid
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This will be important as the finite resources of the earth will be strained by the rise of billions of consumers in other areas.
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Re:
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Re: Re:
http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/
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Disable the chip
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Re: Disable the chip
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Re: Re: Disable the chip
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Re: Re: Disable the chip
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Sigh....
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Re: Sigh....
If the city wants people to recycle then do not punish them for not doing it reward them by sharing the funds by reducing the cost to have the trash removed for those who recycle.
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Garbage Police
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Re: Garbage Police
> they can afford Garbage Police.
Oh, the story gets even better. This program wasn't funded by Cleveland. It was funded by all of us through our federal tax dollars. This was funded by the $800 billion stimulus boondoggle, just as it was in Dayton.
http://www.whiotv.com/money/24513951/detail.html
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Is it just me...
If someone wanted to fine me for the contents of my garbage can, I'd want the right to lock my can until the collectors arrive. And that would create such a mess it'd be counterproductive.
It would also encourage "fly tipping" (where people just throw rubbish out by the side of the road when no-one is around).
As someone I know says often CwH, RtR
- Connect with householders
- Give them a reason to recycle
Some UK local authorities make people wash the labels off metal food cans before recycling the cans. Apart from the fact this is environmentally insane (a central facility would do the same job using less power and water) it is such a demand on people's time they just don't bother.
My current local authority are fairly sane. They give out unlimited free green sacks and there's a list of things that you can put in them, no separating required. Anything NOT recyclable goes in the good old fashioned "Wheelie bin" (aka "other") but the idea is that the allowance for that (or collection frequency) is steadily shrinking. With a family of 5 it takes me 3 weeks to fill the "other" bin.
But there's a huge disparity between areas regarding garbage collection labour.
In Melbourne, Australia a garbage truck with a giant robot arm would screech up next to my kerb, grab the wheelie bin and tip it in the truck. A single driver did the whole neighbourhood. Here in the UK, the truck crawls along the street with 2-4 men on foot accompanying it.
Maybe it's a union thing...
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RFID
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http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/09/07/travel.promotion.fee/index.html?hpt=T2
They even took the travel agency expenses with promotion and will charge tourists for it.
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Recycle for dough
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With all the angst about taxes, it would seem that all the city would need to do is make it well known how much your tax is reduced by recycling and everyone would be onboard. Nah, that's too simple.
I wonder who owns stock in the RFID recycle bin business.
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Re:
"Come buy these rfid chipd - you can charge people for throwing stuff away"
"Come buy these biometric passports = it'll make your boders more secure."
etc etc.
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keeping the bums at bay
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It's not your garbage can.
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Re: It's not your garbage can.
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I don't know...
What you are saying is that you would rather be able to break the law without anyone checking you.
I'm sorry, but some of us actually want the law-breakers to get caught!
And using technology to catch them sounds like a good idea to me.
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Re: I don't know...
What you are saying is that you would rather be able to break the law without anyone checking you.
AND
But it's not your garbage or recycling receptecle. it probably belongs to the service provider. Like other utilities, this service has RULES. Live with them. Just as you do for every other utility including cable, phone, sewage, water, etc.
You both miss the point here. The problem is that anyone can throw rubbish in your bin. (Or steal the contents of your recycle bin to pad their own.)
Recycling may be a good thing, but petty, vindictive and flawed enforcement schemes will antagonise the people and give recycling a bad reputation.
If the rules are stupid then you have to get them changed - for the sake of the reputation of the local authority and the concept of recycling as much as anything.
Complaining here is the first step.
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Re: Re: I don't know...
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Re: Re: I don't know...
I guess it's different in Cleavland, but here we pay to have the garbage men take our garbage. We pay for the bins and we pay for the cans. Our garbage company pays for the land it dumps on. I don't know what they do with the recyclables, but last I heard the city pays for that. How is the city gaining money by recycling?
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Re: Re: I don't know...
The system's we're using have
- locked garbage bins; you and the garbage collector truck can open it, your neighbor can't.
- your bin is registered to your name, so swapping it with another will not solve anything.
- you pay to have your garbage collected by the weight (every kg = x EUR).
- you have specific bins per type of recyclable items (iron, paper, garden/kitchen, ...) and another for the 'rest' (which is the more expensive one).
- the contents of the bins is inspected from time to time to make sure everybody plays fair.
When these systems were introduced, everybody complained that they would be unfair, expensive, intrusive, easy to cheat with...
Now (just a couple of years later), the complaints are (mostly) gone and the benefits are visible: less overall garbage / person & more recycled / person.
And just to be clear: the technology is far from perfect; we are still searching for ways to improve it. But starting somewhere, anywhere, even if it is not optimal, is better than not starting at all!
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Re: I don't know...
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Ya gotta love Cleveland...and it's trash....
Several years ago there was a voluntary program that utilized the "blue plastic bags" that one would get when purchasing goods at the grocery store. It failed miserably and was dropped do to the extreme expense of collection and then further sorting at the recycling center. Most of the material still ended up in the landfill, just sorted into like materials.
Since then, and actually for as long as I can remember, there have been junkers that drive through on trash day, mostly looking for metal and appliances. So will this program put those folks out of business? Or, will it stream line their collections? Will I be fined for them taking my recyclables? What if I recycle my paper and metals for my own profit?
Welcome to the Peoples Republic of Kleveland
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Always an alternative
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Cleveland's obsession with trash
I moved to the neighboring county to escape the madness of the criminal scandals and money problems of Cuyahoga county. Yet the neighboring county is obsessed with putting a major paper company out of business because they are paying non-profit organizations to host scrap paper collection bins. The county created a facility to process paper and it is losing money. Therefore they blame anybody who succeeds where they have failed. They hope to pass a law forbidding the export of scrap paper across county borders.
Scrap and garbage is the new battleground, for while out of work people may have no more money to be taxed, they DO have garbage. Cleveland may be the first, but they won't be the last.
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billing
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big brother
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Re: big brother
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RFID
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Recycling is bad for the economy and questionable for the earth
Regardless, Recycling is just plain bad for the economy, thats a fact. The whole paying 30$ a ton for garbage and receiving 26$ for recyclables is extremely misleading. First off, they're getting ripped off by their garbage collection who actually uses the trash to create their product, which is energy produced by all the methane in the decomposing trash. (Point - The trash collectors want your trash, because they actually make a product with it - good for the economy).
Second, getting paid 26$ for recyclables is crazy, and you only get that much because of subsidies, so good job paying yourself. Nobody in their right mind would buy trash to get the plastics for 26$ because there still has not been a single competitive business in the recycled plastics industry, unless the government is involved. And the government is very involved because recycling "creates jobs," so recycle because that means someone gets the glorious job of sorting through your trash.
Until someone can get consumers to purchase goods made with recycled plastics even though they're more expensive and only slightly better for the environment, Recycling just will not be a productive, efficient, or effective method of getting rid of our trash.
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Heres my garbage
BUT...
I am NOT going to separate this stuff out for you.... that is your problem.
Thats why recycling will never be common place in the US outside the tree hugger crowd.
Separate the recylcables...burn the rest in trash to power plants...
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Business vs Government
Recycling is not a business, it's a government run public service. Their goal is not to make a profit, and they don't. They don't have a product that people want, (they actually pay you to use their product) and the only way they're able to sell their products made from recycled plastics is because the government creates artificial demand.
All this has little to do with the article except that its absolutely insane to pull a stunt like this for economic reasons when terminating the recycling program would actually be a huge benefit to the economy.
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Re: Business vs Government
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Cash Redemption Value
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One more thing
Plastic generally contains a very high content of hydrogen, and when burned in an incinerator or a plasma generator it is one of the trash items that is most dense with usable energy.
So the choice is between collecting, cleaning, melting, and reworking plastic to produce a bottle more expensively than just making a new one or throwing it away and using it as energy.
I just don't understand how the environmentalists ever convinced people this is good. I guess the government isn't filled with the brightest...
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Re: One more thing
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I have 2 bins in my kitchen. They are right next to each other. If what I've said is already over your head, you've got bigger problems. So I have 2 bins, both next to each other. When I make dinner, or feed the cats, or whatever, its trivial to put the paper/glass/metal/plastic into the recycling and the garbage in the trash. If what I've said up to now is over your head or beyond your means, you are the laziest person I will have ever met. I don't even have to think about it, since they are next to each other. It works in my kitchen. Maybe it doesn't for you, but that's not my problem, or the cities problem, or whatever, that's your problem. The only time it takes is moving the recycling bin out once a week if its full.
Really, how hard is it to recycle? (and I'm not talking about the implications of RFID on your recycling bin)
And I already prefer to buy items that are made from recycled materials.
Maybe I've got it easy cause I grew up this way. Maybe I'm a freak. I thought it was pretty normal.
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Re:
Fast forward 20 years, and the city I now live in with my partner starts recycling initiatives. Not a problem. Set out a second bin, just like you, and do it. Gets us a break on our garbage collection to boot. So I totally agree with you. Complaining about it is just making you look lazy.
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Its also in the law books here to recycle, so actually, its not a choice, but its not really enforced, either.
http://www.monroecounty.gov/p/des-ReuseRecyclingLaw.pdf
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Can't believe how lazy people are.
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Re: Can't believe how lazy people are.
A two bin solution for us doesn't happen. After washing and drying my garbage, THEN I'm allowed to recycle that waste stream... pain in the ass.
My recycling was much easier when I could just throw all recyclables in one bin and take it to the curb weekly. My recycling habits when I was in WI was probably 90% of recyclable products (I'd throw away beverage containers into the trash when in public since there weren't any recycling areas in the public spaces). Now, I throw pretty much everything away since I'm not going to clutter up my kitchen with washed and then dried garbage that was meant for a recycling stream.
It's not a matter of me being lazy, it is a matter of making it so obnoxious to recycle that I don't do it anymore out of spite...
Go to one bin of recyclables in which I don't have to wash them, and I'll be back around 90% compliance...
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Re: Re: Can't believe how lazy people are.
My wife, who is from Taiwan was shocked at how little is recycled here as well, they pick up and recycle so much more than we do, batteries, paint, styrofoam, all plastics, and they PAY you upon pickup, not the other way around.
If they want to really get people to recycle, stop making it a crime to not recycle, and instead reward people for recycling. America pretends its a good recycler, but they have the whole system backwards and can barely recycle anything, and now our privacy is beginning to be invaded because our politicians have their heads too far up their rear end to have unobtrusive solutions.
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Re: Re: Re: Can't believe how lazy people are.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Can't believe how lazy people are.
I know, my town sucks.
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single stream recycling
The practical result is that we have two waste streams: recyclables and non-recyclables. All recyclable materials, including paper, plastic and glass containers, and other miscellaneous recyclables, go into the bins, which are emptied every other week. The normal non-recyclable waste is picked up every week. Both waste streams are picked up on the same day of the week, but at different times during the day. I believe each truck drives the same route twice, once for each type of material -- in any case, each material is picked up separately (I know because when I hear the trucks coming I go out to the front of the house to watch them).
I have no objection to the program. We've been keeping the bin in the back yard, but when winter comes we'll probably keep it in the garage. It's a slight hassle to wheel the bin to the curb, which will only get worse when the snow starts to pile up. (In the past we put the recyclables in blue plastic bags, which we carried to the curb weekly.)
I have no Big Brother concerns. (According to news reports, if somebody steals or swaps my bin, the system will eventually spit out an out-of-sequence event, which they will attempt to rectify, even going so far as to hunt down the errant bin.) As a payer of property taxes, I am in favor of saving money, which this program appears to be doing. And as a fan of Nature, I am happy to see that the rate of participation by city residents is significantly higher than it was prior to the advent of these bins. No worries here on this subject.
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Pay or play
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Rats, Rats, Rats!
http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/53317.html#comment
http://hnn.us/board.php?id=59711
respo nse to:
http://hnn.us/articles/59711.html
What it comes down to is that food packages are being constantly redesigned to contain less metal and less glass, and that they increasingly tend to consist of thin layers of different kinds of materials. Old newspapers, the one economically successful element of recycling, are also going away as newspapers are driven out of business by the internet. One might add that in suburban areas, garbage disposals are the norm. If you are in the real estate business, they are one of those things which are easy to install, and make a property more attractive to sell or rent. The net effect is that the trash stream consists almost exclusively of soiled food packaging, burnables, in short.
Of course, in Cleveland, as in any other inner city, the kind of playing around with garbage to score political points, which the city fathers are going in for, is going to result in an epidemic of rats. Beady eyes. Bubonic plague. England has been playing these silly games for a while, but England seems to be one great big Monty Python movie... "produced by J. Fred Llama and forty South American Llamas." I am no longer capable of being amazed by what the British government does.
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Scavengers
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Simple solution
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I'm Sorry Dave, I Can't Let You
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Re:
Actually, they are forcing you to recycle with the threat of a $100 fine for not doing so.
"...dump your trash on your own property, not using city facilities..."
These services are already paid with city property taxes. I do not believe they will let you opt out of this service.
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Re: ridiculous display of entitlement
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Re:
Criticizing the rules isn't an option?
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RFID chip meet stun gun
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Why?
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Seriously, GROW UP. Stop whining about this completely absurd metric you've chosen to measure your "liberty." It's not enough that the city gave you a free recycling bin? It's not enough that the city picks up the recycling for free every week? People are STILL too lazy to sort their trash? Give me a break. Just BLEEPING RECYCLE already and stop complaining about the methods you're forcing the city to use to get you to do it because you're too stubborn to just do the right thing on your own.
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Re: True
Ben Johnson from Rubbish Please
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RFID garbage can locks!
I would love to stop them, but have nowhere to contain the bins, which are shared.
Can we not put a lid lock that opens with an RFID key specific to me, general to the garbage and recycling trucks?
That would be awesome. I'll leave the aluminum separate for the pickers. They have a hard life.
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