Recycling and Waste Haulers
Feb. 11th, 2022 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutExpect edits.
https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/12/01/whos-afraid-of-a-ridwell-box/
Oregon is not a particularly populous state, and most of the population is in Willamette County. So this paper is focused on where the people live in Portland. I grew up in unincorporated King County, then lived within Seattle city limits for about a decade before moving to the East Coast (went back to Seattle for a year and a half), NH and Mass. In the town I lived in in NH, which I am pleased to call “Mayberry”, there were some private haulers, but R. took the family’s trash / recycling / wtf to the town transfer station, where there were various bins and a Still Good table. Once we were here in Middlesex County, I was like, enough of that, we’re going to get waste and recycling pickup. We used Waste Management until within the last year, when service disruptions do to lack of drivers got bad enough that I said, enough of that, and we went back to R. taking the family’s trash / recycling / wtf to the town transfer station. That wasn’t exactly the plan. I was going to do the dump run, probably with T. on Saturdays after martial arts, but possibly midweek when it would be less busy. I did it a couple times, but then R. had stuff he wanted to clear out and he’s basically taken that task over. This is fine by me, and I’m happy to see entire categories of stuff building up in the basement and garage … being entirely gone. A lot of reusable packaging from food deliveries (the waxed cardboard boxes from Siena Farms and the soft-sided coolers from Walden, as well as other things like the dry ice bags and mylar coolbags from Walden) eventually was eligible to be returned (pandemic halted that for a while), and he also got those moved along.
I think in a lot of ways, that a fair amount of energy that people perhaps once devoted to worrying about people going to hell is now devoted to things going to the landfill. This is _probably_ an improvement, altho I have some qualms. Obviously, I would prefer people to make decisions and adjust as necessary while skipping the anxious worrying part. Ridwell as a company is a really interesting operation, in that they are charging really quite a lot compared to the amount charged by the City of Portland / Willamette County for utility haulers. Of course, seen through small town in New England eyes, where community contracts for haulage are comparatively rare — and I haven’t had access to one of those in fifteen years — mostly I’m just laughing because those white metal boxes on porches out here can be any number of different things from medical related PU / DO to ice cream delivery. But I haven’t seen anyone putting recycling in one.
I object to putting _that_ much effort into recycling. I’ve read way too many lifecycle analyses at this point, and while I will always at least consider making changes to move in a reuse / source reduction direction, I worry less and less each year about landfills, because all my issues there have been displaced by carbon footprint. But despite all that, I find myself incredibly impressed by companies like Terra and Ridwell. They’ve figured out a way to truly monetize middle class guilt, and I have so much respect for that.
https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/12/01/whos-afraid-of-a-ridwell-box/
Oregon is not a particularly populous state, and most of the population is in Willamette County. So this paper is focused on where the people live in Portland. I grew up in unincorporated King County, then lived within Seattle city limits for about a decade before moving to the East Coast (went back to Seattle for a year and a half), NH and Mass. In the town I lived in in NH, which I am pleased to call “Mayberry”, there were some private haulers, but R. took the family’s trash / recycling / wtf to the town transfer station, where there were various bins and a Still Good table. Once we were here in Middlesex County, I was like, enough of that, we’re going to get waste and recycling pickup. We used Waste Management until within the last year, when service disruptions do to lack of drivers got bad enough that I said, enough of that, and we went back to R. taking the family’s trash / recycling / wtf to the town transfer station. That wasn’t exactly the plan. I was going to do the dump run, probably with T. on Saturdays after martial arts, but possibly midweek when it would be less busy. I did it a couple times, but then R. had stuff he wanted to clear out and he’s basically taken that task over. This is fine by me, and I’m happy to see entire categories of stuff building up in the basement and garage … being entirely gone. A lot of reusable packaging from food deliveries (the waxed cardboard boxes from Siena Farms and the soft-sided coolers from Walden, as well as other things like the dry ice bags and mylar coolbags from Walden) eventually was eligible to be returned (pandemic halted that for a while), and he also got those moved along.
I think in a lot of ways, that a fair amount of energy that people perhaps once devoted to worrying about people going to hell is now devoted to things going to the landfill. This is _probably_ an improvement, altho I have some qualms. Obviously, I would prefer people to make decisions and adjust as necessary while skipping the anxious worrying part. Ridwell as a company is a really interesting operation, in that they are charging really quite a lot compared to the amount charged by the City of Portland / Willamette County for utility haulers. Of course, seen through small town in New England eyes, where community contracts for haulage are comparatively rare — and I haven’t had access to one of those in fifteen years — mostly I’m just laughing because those white metal boxes on porches out here can be any number of different things from medical related PU / DO to ice cream delivery. But I haven’t seen anyone putting recycling in one.
I object to putting _that_ much effort into recycling. I’ve read way too many lifecycle analyses at this point, and while I will always at least consider making changes to move in a reuse / source reduction direction, I worry less and less each year about landfills, because all my issues there have been displaced by carbon footprint. But despite all that, I find myself incredibly impressed by companies like Terra and Ridwell. They’ve figured out a way to truly monetize middle class guilt, and I have so much respect for that.