It's infuriating to read an editorial about how city residents are throwing away "$500,000" in cash. $500,000?? Are you kidding me??? I bet the fuel budget alone for diesel trucks that rumble down the street to pick up all the little blue bins is probably $200,000 and now add staffing?? Recycling programs are not typically cost effective. Now they want to add some totes and fines to make a thin margin program fatter?? They want to do this at the expense of many families who can't really afford this?? Recycling is a friggin' joke in this country. How about this. Let's fine companies for creating excessive packaging. Or how about making consumers pay extra for buying stuff with excessive packaging. What about mixed media where packages have little plastic windows to see the product inside. Can't recycle that now can we??
The three little arrows stand for "REDUCE, REUSE, and then RECYCLE". Why? Because the biggest savings are in the Reduce category and then the Reuse category. But city officials and the consuming public doesn't want to hear anything about the first two arrows, they're all obsessed with "Recycle".
Shame on the news for printing this story making city residents appear lazy / stupid. For chrissakes, there are people driving around the city collecting large items to take to scrapyards. My guess is that this problem applies to people in Amherst, Cheektowaga and other areas, perhaps in greater excess than in Buffalo.