INC NEWS - Solid Waste bulky item pick up simplified

[RW Pickle]

I spent some time today figuring out the new bulky item (basically
furniture and appliances) pick up schedule. I was confused and I'm sure
there are others out there in the same boat. Here it goes...

Typical waste is picked up on one of four days; Monday, Tuesday, Thursday
or Friday. If you think of Monday as being 1, Tuesday as 2, Thursday as 3
and Friday as 4, then what ever day of the week your regular waste is
picked up on will correspond to that full week of the month (Monday is the
first full week, Tuesday is the second full week, Thursday is the third
week and Friday is the last week of the month). Since this new service is
only once a month, it does the whole City in one of 4 weeks.

The program begins on the Monday of the week that your regular waste is
picked up. Even if your regular waste is picked up on Thursday, the bulky
item program begins on that Monday of that week. They want three days to
get it in so it may still be there for a couple of days, but they say they
will get it.

What bothers me more with the price of fuel, labor costs, equipment and
maintenance this program offers, is that now at least once a month, we'll
have five waste trucks in our neighborhood. Five trucks to pick up our
trash. The new program will put an additional two trips a week (once a
month; by the same type of vehicle) to pick up in one pass the appliances
and in the next trip, the furniture. So now we have the green can truck,
the brown can truck, the recycling truck of TFC, and 2 trips by these new
knuckle-boom trucks. Doesn't that seem excessive? That means that in a
month (typically 4 weeks), 14 trips by various waste trucks will be in
your neighborhood picking up waste. When you think about it that way, you
have to wonder why there is any trash out there in the first place with so
many opportunities to get rid of it. Yet, if you haul waste to the
transfer station on your time, in your vehicle, you are still charged for
disposal. It's this attitude of not wanting the waste (even though trucks
are driving all across the City picking it up) bad enough to reward those
who would not cost the City a dime for collection by bringing their waste
to them for disposal. A free dump day a month for all residents would
yield much more waste than any new program could possibly ever pick up.
You need only go and see for yourself (at the Transfer Station) the
once-a-year it now happens. It's a very popular idea and an enormous
amount of waste is collected. All with no collection cost associated with
it...

If you're a City ($50) or County ($80) resident, you can buy a waste
disposal decal from the County and go 10 times a day if you want to the
numerous disposal sites in the County. You can do that every day they are
open if you want and it's only the $50/$80 decal fee (for a year). This
makes disposal fees much cheaper over the course of the year instead of
paying the City at the Transfer Station. It all (both City and County
waste) comes to the same place (the Transfer Station) before it all gets
hauled off to Virginia...

RWP
27 Beverly