Big Brother is watching!
Posted on 08/20/2010 8:00:42 AM PDT by goldendays
High-tech carts will tell on Cleveland residents who don't recycle ... and they face $100 fine
Trash carts containing more than 10 percent recyclable material could lead to a $100 fine, according to Waste Collection Commissioner Ronnie Owens. Recyclables include glass, metal cans, plastic bottles, paper and cardboard. City Council on Wednesday approved spending $2.5 million on high-tech carts for 25,000 households across the city, expanding a pilot program that began in 2007 with 15,000 households.
The expansion will continue at 25,000 households a year until nearly all of the city's 150,000 residences are included. Existing carts might be retrofitted with the microchips. "We're trying to automate our system to be a more efficient operation," Owens said. "This chip will assist us in doing our job better."
The chip-embedded carts are just starting to catch on elsewhere. The Washington, D.C. suburb of Alexandria, Va., earlier this year announced it would issue carts to check whether people are recycling.
Some cities in England have used the high-tech trash carts for several years to weigh how much garbage people throw out. People are charged extra for exceeding allotted limits.
Cleveland officials want to automate nearly all residential waste collection under a program being financed in part by a new fee that went into effect earlier this year.
The automated trucks allow drivers to remain in the cab and empty carts using a remote-control arm. Cleveland owns three of these trucks and plans to buy nine more. 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.
The city last year sent 220,000 tons of garbage to landfills and collected 5,800 tons of recyclables. City Council approved updated trash collection ordinances last month to include a section on automated waste collection and curbside recycling.
The new law changes infractions of the law from a minor misdemeanor to a civil penalty. The recycling law only applies to residents who have been issued the carts.
The new law also prohibits people from setting out excessive amounts of trash on tree lawns, which officials say has been an ongoing problem. Fines for excessive trash will range from $250 to $500 depending on the amount.
In either case, the property owner receives the citation. Landlords are responsible for making sure their tenants follow the law.
Owens said Cleveland will conduct a public-service campaign to educate residents about the new collection system and recycling program.
The city stepped up enforcement of ordinances governing trash collection last year by issuing 2,900 tickets, nearly five times more tickets than in 2008. Those infractions include citations for people who put out their trash too early or fail to bring in their garbage cans from the curb in a timely manner.
The Division of Waste Collection is on track to meet its goal of issuing 4,000 citations this year, Owens said. "We're trying to make sure Cleveland stays clean and residents are properly informed on how these things should be set out," he said. "By issuing these tickets, it's helping us change the attitude or perception on how things should be set out."
Councilman Martin Keane, who represents the West Park neighborhood, said he would prefer that the Division of Waste Collection use more discretion when deciding whether to issue a ticket. A warning in many instances would suffice, he said.
"Everybody knows the ones who blatantly disregards the law," Keane said. "Those are the people we should hit with a $100 ticket."
I guess they want to drive any remaining productive citizens out, once and for all.
It’s a bad place. Started when Boy Wonder Kucinich took it into municipal bankruptcy in the 80s.
At that point I left.
Inherited a house up there last year, selling it is a nightmare.
I say this not as a guy who wants to pooh-pooh the benefits of recycling (I do it, I think everyone should), but as one who wants to pooh-pooh the benefits of big nanny government.
I’ll be the first to say it-— “Just a lot of lard arse bureaucrats with too much time on their hands”
It’s better they play solitaire on their computers for 7 hours a day. Instead they blow money on high tech garbage trucks and hassle taxpayers
“Isn’t Cleveland one of those labor-union, socialist, hell-hole utopias like Detroit “
Yes it is! When I go downtown, for any reason, I carry.
Mr Chip meet Mr Hammer.....
Think how much fun it would be to distribute your recyclables into the trash of your granola hippie neighbors....
No kidding. If I had one of those bins with a chip in it... it might “accidentally” meet the business end of a hammer.
The country is falling apart thanks to a bunch of marxists, and they are fining people for not sorting their garbage!
Please tell me this is from a 3rd rate sci fi novel.
I am sure there is a money trail between some politician and the company who provides the equipment.
...I’ve got my doubts on whether this will work...snart chip or not...some folks just won’t make the effort...a while back Washington DC made a big appeal to residents to recycle...they figured the city could make millions a year by salvaging metals/plastic/cardboard...the better off neighborhoods complied...the bad neighborhoods were indifferent.
This article is complete horse$hit.
1) The “chipping” is just an RFID tag that allows the trash-truck/recycle-trucks’s computer to log a particular can to a particular issued-to address.
2) There is no way no how that any “smart-bin” can identify 10% recyclable material in a given bin. Even if each piece of recyclable trash had an RFID identifier in it, you still would need to know the weight of each empty bottle/can to calculate that.
Thus, the LIKELY method they use (deduced in spite of the idiotic article) is that the city is tracking the weight of your particular trash bin and your particular recycle bin, and penalizing you if you don’t have say 10lbs of recycled material for every 100lbs of trash-trash in the other bin.
THAT is possible.
But also stupid.
A) wedge a brick or path paver in your recycle bin to make sure it’s always above the 10% limit.
B) Be sure to run the hose on the bin after you put the newspaper in it. “A pint is a pound the world around!”
C) Put on some “Ramones” and ‘Beat your bin with a baseball bat.’ (Be sure to have multiple hits from ‘kids’ who happened to whack the RFID chip...)
It's not for increasing compliance. It's for increasing NON-compliance.
They just need an excuse to force you to voluntarily pay more fines.
Big Brother is watching!
Looking for ways to minimize your environmental impact? We’ve created a program called Smart Energy that can help. You simply choose to contribute a portion of your monthly natural gas bill to offset the greenhouse gasses associated with your natural gas use. Your investment will go toward funding biogas projects in our region, capturing methane emitted from cow waste and turning it into a renewable energy source. It’s an easy way to make your natural gas use “climate neutral” and help fight climate change.
http://www.smartenergynw.com/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.