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Friday, February 10, 2012
How to opt-out of green waste bin system
by Kathleen Haley, published on January 4, 2010 at 9:30 PM
Storyline: City Services
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When the Utilities Department recently explored changes to Sacramento’s green waste pickup system, some residents expressed intense opposition to scrapping on-the-street pickup. They said they prefer that method to the use of bins.
The city's current methods of green waste pickup are on-the-street pickup and a voluntary bin system. Councilman Steve Cohn and a staffer for Councilman Rob Fong said recently that they support giving all residents the choice of bins over on-the-street pickup.
Residents can continue on-the-street pickup and the following information will help.
How to opt-out
A city employee may leave a green waste bin at your house if your neighborhood has been selected for bin pickup. To keep on-the-street pickup, you need to opt-out of the bin system.
You can opt-out by calling 311, Utilities Department spokeswoman Jessica Hess said, and telling the operator that you don't want the bin.
What will it cost me?
Hess pointed out that if you opt-out of the bin program, green waste pickup will cost more. The city now charges $9.37 for bin pickup, and $12.41 for on-the-street pickup monthly.
The difference in price is because when city workers gather lawn waste piles from the street, they use two vehicles — the “claw” and a loading vehicle.
By contrast, the city uses one vehicle to pick up bins.
In addition, the loading vehicle used for on-the-street pickup system fills up more quickly than the loading vehicle for the bin system, Hess said. This means that on-the-street pickup vehicles make more trips, adding cost.
Utilities Director Marty Hanneman said last week that city staffers do not know the current costs of the on-the-street system. A growing number of people are choosing bins, which is hiking on-the-street pickup costs, he said.
For now, the $12.41 monthly for on-the-street pickup will remain in force.
What are these city employees talking about?
The Utilities Department uses specific terms to refer to the city’s green waste system.
Officially, the city refers to on-the-street pickup as “loose-in-the-street collection.”
The city uses the phrase “containerized green waste collection” to refer to the system of using bins for green waste.
Coming Tuesday: A guide for residents who want the city to start bin service in their neighborhoods.
Kathleen Haley is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.
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Because the City made "opt out" difficult, and cumbersome. Now they have inflated numbers when most folks put their bin in the garage and continue to dump waste in the street.
To the City -
When the costs/rates are calculated... I would like to make sure that it's calculated based on leaf piles VS bins on pickup day - and NOT calculated by the ridiculous statistics which have been shifted by the implementation of the heinous "opt out" program.
Of course, if you deliver bins and call it "opt out" and make it difficult to return them (as many people have commented is the case)... then you will have inflated numbers falsely showing that the bin program is widely adopted.
If you use these numbers in calculating my new rate (instead of what's actually put out on the street), then I will be sure to make public comment about the City Utility dept at an upcoming City Council meeting.
1) During fall, winter, and spring, this debris can and does get blown and swept by rain into the drain and sewer systems, which often causes widespread street flooding. When this backup is severe during strong storms, entire neighborhoods can flood into first floor levels, which happened a couple years ago in parts of Land Park.
2) The Mosquito and Vector Control District tells us that some of the most common places where mosquitoes breed in our urban and suburban neighborhoods in Sac are in standing pools of water in storm drains that are only exist because there is leaf and plant material preventing the water from properly draining away.
3) Numerous piles of debris in the street make it harder to safely drive down streets, harder to find a place to park on the street, more dangerous backing out of driveways, and far more dangerous for cyclists who must swerve into traffic to avoid the piles.
4) The use of the "claw" to pick up debris piled in the street often causes deep scrapes in the street asphalt which means that more frequent street re-paving projects are required, which costs taxpayers more money if we want smooth streets.
A few years ago when we lived in the Pocket and the City switched us to "containerized green waste collection," or green waste bins, we were thrilled with how much easier it made collecting clippings and yard debris from our backyard (better than a wheelbarrow), and how tidy it kept the debris until the day when it would be picked up. We've since moved to Fair Oaks where in our neighborhood the bin is the only obvious option (I've never seen a pile of debris in the street left for pickup anywhere in our neighborhood), and everyone uses the bins regularly and without any obvious trouble. The bins keep the streets and sewer drains much cleaner, and it's nice to know that when I do yard work, I only have to move the clippings and debris one time -- into the bin, rather than messing with my leaf and debris pile on different days to keep it from blowing all over the place before pick up day.
I think people are often resistant to change, but if they try the bins with open minds, they might realize that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for typical yard work. I also like that they save our municipalities money in several ways.
So, I strongly support the City's policy of charging people more who insist on putting their yard debris in the street, since it not only costs more to pick the stuff up in that form, but it also costs more in sewer and street maintenance as I mentioned above. Of course the cheapest option is to compost most of your yard debris yourself and use it for fertilizer, which cuts down on the amount the City needs to collect, but that's not always possible or desirable. So for everything you can't or don't want to compost, the bins are great.
Frankly, I'd support eliminating the on-the-street pick up as an "option" except for special requests, which people would have to pay for out of pocket. These special request trips would likely cost far more than $12.41 per trip, let alone only that much per utility billing cycle, but people need to pay for impractical options if they insist upon them. We don't dump our garbage in big, open heaps in the street to be picked up by the 'claw" machine, and there's little better reason to continue doing that with green waste now that we've found a better option with containerized bins (and backyard composting).
Now that you have lived in those two places and had such good experiences, buy property in and move to the central city near food selling businesses and you'll find out the problems with containerization.
And don't forget to buy your 75-80 year old mother a corner lot house so she can enjoy picking up all the city trees' wet leaves, pedestrian discarded trash, containers of half eaten food, beer bottles and cans, plastic bags, debris, tree pods, sticks and branches and break those up to stuff in her container to lug in from the street and then back out from her side or backyard--IF she has either.
One more thing, she may have to pick up those tree and yard clippings that your suburban neighbors bring in to downtown and dump on her street.
To all of those unwilling to convert...have you ever noticed the train of landscape trucks returning from Placer and El Dorado counties, with their beds bulging with bags of lawn clippings?? Why do you think they bring that stuff back into the city. Continue howling about the unjustice of having to bin your clippings...there are plenty of folks in the suburbs that really appreciate your effort to continue the dump it in the street campaign...
For anyone who has a yard, composting is really a big part of the answer if people have "too much for their own container." Mulching leaves with a mower is easy, fast, and it almost totally eliminates the need to rake, even in the fall. It's certainly much easier to do than raking up huge piles of leaves and hauling them to a compost pile, a street pile, or a bin, and it's much better for the soil. It would be great if the city did an education campaign about composting and mower mulching, as these are truly the best options.
-- It appears the City more frequently pick-ups on-street green waste during the fall when more leaves need to be dealt with, so perhaps they can do more frequent pick-ups of the bins, too during certain seasons or upon request. There doesn't need to be an unmanageable excess in any neighborhood.
However, it seems that creative solutions might best be targeted to specific neighborhoods rather than have a city-wide policy regarding bins or no bins for yard waste, since some of the issues faced by those in the central-city areas are indeed different from issues of folks in the suburbs. But please don't imply that I or anyone else participating in this discussion needs to move to Midtown or the central city to understand -- I and many other suburbanites are open to hearing about the plights of maintaining property in the central city, but just as much as central city residents don't want a city-wide policy applied to you if it doesn't make sense, why should people who chose to live in suburban areas have policies that really work best for people in Midtown areas? I actually chose to live outside of Midtown because it was cheaper to move farther out, but certainly having garbage all over my lawn or people regularly pawing through my garbage and recycling and mixing it all up would have turned me off to central-city living (plus, if you know someone is going to paw through for recyclables, then aren't their creative solutions for this that you could try? Put them in a bag or box inside your bin at the top where folks can grab them easily, or come up with another plan to distribute them so your bins aren't totally messed up).
The argument about the dilemma of "your 75-80 year old mother" doesn't make a lot of sense. First, wouldn't she need to have all that stuff in her yard picked up anyway, most of which needs to go in some kind of bin? Cans and bottles in recycling, and trash in the garbage bin? So what's the big deal about adding a third bin for yard waste? (except perhaps for limited space to store all the bins) And perhaps more important, doesn't this issue of the elderly needing help picking up yard waste and debris in their yards speak to more pressing social issues -- for extended family and neighbors to help out those who need it, such as the elderly? If I lived in the same city as my elderly mother or grandmother and bought her a house where she'd have to deal with lots of yard waste OR other people's trash scattered on her lawn, I'd help her out by doing this sort of work as much as possible myself rather than complaining that the city's system for dealing with trash was defective.
On individual streets both in and outside the central city, sometimes neighbors will put some extra yard waste on a neighbor's pile in places where both bins and in-street waste pick-up are happening. But perhaps that's where neighbors need to get to know each other and split the fee for having one or two regular locations for in-street yard waste pick up that numerous people share? Or, if one neighbor is regularly abusing someone else's in-street pile, people can report others for a citation who aren't using their bins or paying for in-street pick up. It just seems there are better solutions than totally rejecting the new bin system altogether or insisting that half the city should opt out.
Finally, I note that neither response (Dale, Rhys) dealt with the very real points that bins help prevent street flooding, mosquito breeding, and traffic problems when people have to try to avoid big piles of yard waste with their cars and bicycles. Instead, the replies seem to rejoice in pitting central city residents against suburbanites using arguments that ring false. Interesting.
This past summer my neighbor and I saw a truck drive down I Street and stop next to a two parcel vacant lot and dump the entire contents the length of the two lots. He took photos on his digital camera forwarded them to staff responsible to enforce illegal dumping--and yes it was from outside the central city. Incidentally, suburbs start outside the central city--sometimes a three or five minute drive from East Sac or Land Park to dump in the central city.
Again, your final paragraph reflects you had not read prior comments of weeks ago. I did not reply because those general points were debunked. Further most of the trash and garbage in the piles doesn't come from people rifling through the bins. I'm not going to repeat the sources that I wrote about in prior comments to the earlier articles.
Like you've just done here today, you routinely dismiss good points other people make with insults and arrogance, which is not acceptable for productive discourse. "Your idealism and naivety [sic/sp] doesn't [sic] fit with our reality," you tell me. Nice guy! I could throw equally nasty comments back at you, but I don't see the point. While I admitted I don't know everything about the problems with central city waste collection (which I'm sure are wide and varied), you are also not all-knowing or free from error or ignorance, even though you clearly think your viewpoints are far more valuable than anyone else's, that your experience is the only valid one, and that your opinions should hold sway no matter what.
Also, I don't think my points about clogged sewer drains, street flooding, mosquito problems, and hazards for bikes and cars posed by street waste piles were AT ALL debunked in recent weeks by anyone writing coherently or in the business of city services. Indeed, I see that many of my points were supported or already made quite cogently by numerous other community members writing comments to these articles, including some of your neighbors, and also including your seeming arch-nemesis, Gabriel. But since you insulted his reasonable responses at length, too, and insulted or illogically rejected these same points when others made them, I'm not surprised to be getting the same treatment. I don't know any of you, but it's obvious to me who is making the most sense and who deserves to be listened to, and it's not people who are rude and insulting. Good luck making your neighborhood a nice place to live. You need it.
I never said nor do I think that my comments are more valuable or more valid. That is your impression. I didn't dismiss them either --I over came them and showed their invalidity as an overall solution. In both those sentences you describe exactly the impression I get from your own and other supporters' attitudes and comments. The difference is that my comments were and still are based on the reality of experience--not theory and speculation.
Strange that only the one-size-fits-all proponents have trouble understanding the writing and attack it. Perhaps that is because you and them couldn't relate to the reality of how complex and varied our city neighborhoods are.
Incidentally, the reason I concluded that you had not read the prior articles is your comments took none of the views contrary to yours into consideration.