Once a week? My trash gets picked up once a month, and the bin is usually half-full. (Recycling is picked up every other week.)
:dubious: Firewood? I’ve never smelled burning firewood that smells like burning garbage. Call me skeptical. Still, it doesn’t say that he was ever cited for burning garbage.
It’s interesting that he was allowed to cancel the service, if it is in violation of the law to cancel the service.
Fn mafia…
At the very least, why would the city do something so anti-competitive as force all residents to contract with the same waste company? Kickbacks? Strongarming unions?
They probably assumed he was cutting off the service because he was moving out. When nobody else subsequently signed up at that address, they may have become suspicious.
I think this is another case of the law prescribing methods rather than objectives.
Logically, anything that reduces garbage should be encouraged. If I, through a combination of recycling, composting, and just plain Not Buying Stuff, produce one bag of garbage a year, why should I be required to have a pickup every week?
Garbage P/U is considered a public utility in many communities and regulated as such. In many, if not most, areas of the U.S., you don’t have any choice of electric, nat. gas and water suppliers.
I combine my garbage and recycling w/ my tenants, so I only have to pay for one P/U each week. So far the powers that be haven’t questioned the practice.
Years ago I had a next door neighbor who burned his trash in a backyard barrel. I asked him several times to stop. When he persisted I called the fire dept. They issued him a citation that cost him a couple hundred dollars. I think it’s a very rare person, in a residential setting, who can dispose of/recycle everything.
It seems retarded, but in a lot of places there are ordinances like that. My ex-husband’s family had a similar problem–they were total hippies, vegetarians, composted everything, recycled, bought most stuff in bulk, the works. The entire extent of their non-recyclable garbage was a ball of plastic (they washed all food residue off) about the size of a fist per month. They had permission to place that ball of plastic into the next door neighbors’ can for disposal. They figured why pay for garbage disposal they don’t use? Nope, county came out and threatened them with lots of fines if they didn’t sign up for garbage service.
On the other hand, my former across the street neighbor obviously had no trash pickup service–he never had a can out, they never stopped at his house for the last three or so years since his mother died. It doesn’t appear that any governmental enforcement agency took notice, and the house was simply stuffed full of garbage when he left. From this I surmise that in Portland we aren’t required to sign up for garbage pickup.
To my mind if a county has an ordinance requiring garbage pickup they should fund it out of property taxes and contract out for the actual pickup to the lowest bidder. It would sure save on billing costs and administration/enforcement, not to mention saving a whole shitload o’paper. Otherwise the whole “you’re required by law to sign up with XYZ Garbage” seems a tad coercive and restrictive of free trade. Why shouldn’t individuals be allowed to contract with whoever they like as long as somebody’s picking up the garbage?
And in Toronto they’d get on the news as an exemplar of Positive Civic Behaviour and and the mayor’d probably take them out for dinner (at a low-cost family restaurant, because we’re broke, dont’cha know).
And that should be the test for compliance. Not “two pickups a month” or “uses our registered supplier” or anything like that; just “no garbage building up on site”.
I know of a townhouse in east-central Toronto that was built with no connection to municipal water and sewer lines. I bet they had to get a zoning variation for that one…
already happened - this fellow was interviewed last week on CBC’s As It Happens, “No Garbage Man” - available to be heard on-line.
He maintains that each time the police and fire came in response to the neighbours’ complaints about his wood-stove, he showed it to them and they left without giving any citations.
Hey, I can answer this one - I do contract compliance for a waste brokerage …
Communities ‘franchise’ areas for a couple of reasons.
In the old days, the town picked up garbage [using the term to mean anything discarded, i really dont want to get overcomplex.] They owned the town dump, and the trucks, and people bought their galvanized garbage cans from the local hardware store.
This cost a fair amount of money, trucks, maintenance, licensing and insurance. Personnel to pick up the trash, and to run the dump.
Then a few private companies started picking up businesses because they would run trucks any day of the week they needed, so the private companies were a lot more flexible. Of course in a lot of more urban areas, this was also a great way for the mob to make legit money, and hide illegal money.
Instead of having the mob lean on businesses to use their service, and to control and regulate the service to avoid shady business the communities started to regulate commercial carriers by picking one or two and granting them a franchise. Sometimes there are several companies franchised into an area, so it might be that Allied has the residential businesss, and Waste Management has teh commercial. It became a great way to get the cost of hauling trash off the town - all most towns do nowdays is pay a flat fee to ‘allied’ for the residential service, or the consumer contracts with allied for service and it may or may not be invoiced on his utilities billing for the town.
I used to be franchised to Waste Management, but wth the whole FBI trash industry sting in the tristate area, WM has bailed out of CT in many areas, so I have a contract with a different hauler. IIRC the town now owns what used to be WMI’s dump a few miles away.
I had to laugh at a CSI vegas a few weeks ago… they named a bogus trash company in Vegas that doesnt exist and never did=)