Trash This Program

Re: Sylmar trash experiment

A few a weeks ago the city trash folks dumped at our door:

1. Two large (60 gallon) covered, wheeled receptacles;

2. A small, open yellow basket;

3. Two expensive (slick, photos) booklets and an instruction sheet.

Everything useful in the three publications could have been covered on the instruction sheet with room to spare.

The instructions tell us that:

1. All cans, glass bottles and plastic drink containers are to be washed and collected in the open yellow basket;

2. All yard, garden and lawn trimmings are to be separately packaged and driven by us to the city yard on weekends;

3. All else is to be put in the 60-gallon containers for pickup by a special truck;

4. Except newspapers and cardboard, which are to be put at the curb tied together in newspaper-size bundles and,

5. If we wonder what to do with our existing trash barrels, they make “good storage containers.”

Since these events, a unique special truck has collected the 60-gallon trash cans but not the yellow basket or newspapers. That truck goes house to house considerably slower than the old one used to.

Our neighborhood hillside is starting to display local homeowners’ garden trimmings and old trash containers.

In summary, we now have to wash, separate and bundle our trash as well as deliver some of it to the city. The city now has to use two expensive trucks (and drivers, I presume) to collect less trash (since we have to deliver some) than before and someone will have to clean the hillsides of the trash being left there by people unwilling or unable to deliver it.

I don’t know (but I’ll bet) that little or none of the benefits of recycling for which this is allegedly being done are being realized at this point but a large cost increase is.

If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then one designed and executed by government is probably a lame mammoth.

J.W. CURTISS, Sylmar