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I'll answer the first part of your question which talked
a little bit about municipalities and what they can do to
reduce waste. I think one of the most visible examples
are our municipalities that have incorporated bag bans.
I think state of California defeated it
but LA (Los Angeles) just passed the bag ban
and this would be on single-use bags
at stores which literally
is a bag that you are just using to transport
from the store to your home and then immediately it becomes disposed off.
So, banning this kind of
single-use a bags I think have been
proliferating like crazy. - Seattle has
a bag ban. Over here in the DC (District of Columbia) area we have two
bag taxes in place - Montgomery County, Maryland and Washington DC
Washington DC is program has been ongoing
for little while now and they've been pretty happy with it. It was framed
as a water quality
issue not a solid waste management issue
but they're having some success.
It has not been a catastrophe
as is sometimes forecast, but there have been snags
but that program is ongoing and is a really good model to look at
I think
another question that Katrina was asking was about what
we call commercial recycling and why that is treated differently from
residential and public institution recycling in some but not all cities
I can speak to the experience of New York where we have that in the
extreme. We have one
giant centralized
public sector agency that's serving eight million residents
and thousands of public institutions and then we have
an almost Wild West free-market of
hundreds of different private carters that are competing
to pick up
commercial waste and what happens
is that quite rationally these guys
will collect corrugated cardboard
and maybe bulk metal when the markets are good and
and nothing else. You know what I mean. This is what happens when you have a free
market situation.
On the other extreme is San Francisco where you have one giant private service
provider who
is collecting all residential and all commercial waste. You have beautiful economies of
scale, you've got the mandatory
program. But even before the program was made mandatory
it was very successful.
So, if you can overcome political opposition on the part
of the existing and commercial carters
to moving to a more consolidated
forms of collection, I think you can really improve
waste management in the city - A question I have that I'd like to throw out
to the panel that
relates to this. I've heard discussions in the past but have not heard of any
municipality has adopted it
is a litter tax on those businesses
that seem to increase a lot of
litter, such as fast food litter where
as I heard it discussed, there would be
surveys done periodically of the litter in the types of litter that seem to
relate to certain industries would relate to the type of
tax they would have on the products they did they distribute. You know like hamburger
wrapper so whatever
maybe. I don't know that any municipality has passed
a litter tax tailored towards commercial/retail
Does anyone know if that has worked anywhere?
Here in Virgina,
not as a municipality but the state has something that is colloquially referred
to as the litter tax
and that is a decades old compromise that was struck to keep out
a deposit bill but it is effectively on items
that are frequently littered even though it was originally to be on items
that would have been subject to a deposit bill because it's now
on producers and retailers of items in bottles
which bottle beverage is consumed away from home are a large portion
of the litter sector and then in return, that money
is used - was originally put just for litter
control and litter cleanups - is also partially used to fund recycling and
there are many other recipients of that money.
So, that is a connection between the retailer
the littered item and the litter itself, but
again that's at a state level and - that's sort of - almost coincidental
since that was not the original intent
- Interesting - You know, I feel compelled to go back to the
commercial recycling question because I should have mentioned
you know working for the Delaware Solid Waste Authority,
Delaware does have a universal recycling law
and although
commercial entities and businesses are not included yet,
starting in 2014, commercial businesses will also have to be
provided with recycling services
So, the recycling law as mandated just requires
all the haulers to provide recycling services at no additional cost
but doesn't actually mandate that the entity that receives the cart
has to cycle. But, nonetheless it has increased recycling rates
tremendously