Garbage ..... san antonio...alternatives? (Alamo, Bowie: house, buying, school)

[skypup]

I am not against the new garbage collection system in general. I believe in recycling and being green to the point of riding my 85mpg scooter around town to run my errands to conserve gas. My question is this. What do you do with extra garbage? BTW, my neighbors' garbage is too full to add mine to theirs. Since the new system was implemented I have yet to catch up with my garbage situation. Every week the container is full before I am done collecting, compressing and adding all the garbage. We just have the three of us including my 91 year old father-in-law. I can't imagine what really large families are doing.

I can understand why this new system is saving money. It's providing less service. Seriously, can additional pick-ups be bought when needed? How? Cost? Thanks in advance.

[SnappyBob]

I don't know what system you're on but we have the automated system in the city. We have one 90 gal. garbage can and one 90 gal. recycle can. The only time I have capacity problems is Christmas or Thanksgiving weeks. The rest of the time I rarely ever come close to filling either one up. When we went on the two can system we went ahead and got another kitchen trash can so we could separate the garbage from the recyclables. You might want to do a sort of mental inventory of what is kind of trash is going into the garbage container and see if some of that can go into the recycle can. Usually a lot of stuff that get tossed into the garbage can could also be tossed into a compost bin. I don't know that you can schedule extra pickups. You can call 311 to find out.

[Chaka]

Generate less trash?

Seriously. I'd go through all your garbage and see what can be composted and what can be recycled. You'd be surprised. The recycle list is huge now. Tons of stuff on there that never was before.

Next thing is to look at what you buy that's generating such waste - lots of individual containers/packaging? Anything that can be scaled back?

We're not on the new system yet, but we have 1 reg. garbage can that we put out once every 2 weeks, sometimes it's not even full then, unless we have a party. We're 2 adults and one child (still in diapers but cloth so no garbage there). We compost A LOT, and we recycle a ton. We also re-use a lot of things. I try to avoid buying stuff that's in individual packaging as much as possible, and also stuff that is not reusable in some way.

[Bowie]

At my house (4 people) we've found that the recycling can is nearly full each week, while the garbage can has 1 bag in it. Are you sure that you're recycling everything that can be recycled?

It is possible to schedule extra pickups. Each residence is entitled to two per year, without charge. Beyond that, the city charges a fee for the extra pickups.

[jules07]

We're on the "new" system, too. I dunno if you're on the same system (the HUGE 90 gallon carts)? Well, there are 8 in our household (2 parents, 6 "kids", 4 of which are teens or young adult). The only time our "rubbish" container gets anywhere NEAR full is when we forget to put it out on collection day and it ends up with 2 weeks worth of stuff.

[1StarRanch]

You could always dig a hole in the back yard and bury it

[hadleyzoo]

Originally Posted by Bowie

At my house (4 people) we've found that the recycling can is nearly full each week, while the garbage can has 1 bag in it. Are you sure that you're recycling everything that can be recycled?

It is possible to schedule extra pickups. Each residence is entitled to two per year, without charge. Beyond that, the city charges a fee for the extra pickups.

Same here...actually we barely make it to recycling day many weeks--the can is almost overflowing. And we'll go 2-3 weeks before putting out the garbage. 2 adults, 1 teenager, and 1 elementary-aged child here.

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by 1StarRanch

You could always dig a hole in the back yard and bury it

I know you're joking, but ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The previous owners of our house, I don't think they did this intentionally, but they certainly let it happen. I think they just tossed garbage into the yard and let the 3 dogs do what they wanted with it.

After 3.5 years here, we're still finding buried rubbish. Esp after this drought rain drought cycle, so much turns up. We've found one or two interesting things, but mostly it's just trash. Still waiting for the buried treasure to turn up. (At least my next door neighbors found a bayonet from the days of the Alamo. We just find old GI Joes...and not even antique ones).

[fierce_flawless]

Originally Posted by Chaka

I know you're joking, but ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The previous owners of our house, I don't think they did this intentionally, but they certainly let it happen. I think they just tossed garbage into the yard and let the 3 dogs do what they wanted with it.

After 3.5 years here, we're still finding buried rubbish. Esp after this drought rain drought cycle, so much turns up. We've found one or two interesting things, but mostly it's just trash. Still waiting for the buried treasure to turn up. (At least my next door neighbors found a bayonet from the days of the Alamo. We just find old GI Joes...and not even antique ones).

LOL!

I am wondering some things about my previous owners too... I was digging for another flower bed and found some weird stuff. My son (the 10 year old) has dreams of being an archaeologist some day and he was sooooo excited when I would say "what the heck is this??"... but the stuff turned out to be an old bottle cap, a tiny plastic miniature coke bottle, and a "coin" that was not really a coin after all but a fake trick coin with heads on both sides.. which he would have liked if it hadn't chipped when we tried to clean it to see if it was anything "exciting".

He and I both watch "If these walls could talk" together on HGTV, and he wants soooooo badly to find "stuff". We found stuff in the attic that belonged to the PO, she worked for the school system and it was just some mail from 1980 and he was thinking it was "something old and significant". Poor baby.

I am just wondering when we'll get the new system? I'm READY. We heard about it right before we were about to go buy huge lidded cans, because the raccoons, stray dogs, cats, etc, area always turning our other cans over and tearing up the trash before it's picked up!

[BigDogsTX]

Our biggest problem is going to be what to do with yard waste... We have a very large lot in Oak Hills and in the spring and fall it's not uncommon for us to have over 20 bags of leaves and lawn clippings. In San Diego I know they have a weekly yard waste pick up in a green roller can along with the blue recycle and rubbish cans. It's going to get expensive if I have to haul it all off to the dump every week. Not really sure what it takes to compost but Im pretty sure I would not have the time or interest in keeping a pile in my yard.