New Garbage and Recycling Receptacles (apartment complexes, house, neighborhood)

[wCat]

OMgosh...I thought we were the only nuts in town to use our old garbage cans for composting! We have three! (not the new ones, mind you... )

[SATX56]

Oh! I could spend some time on this subject!! First, everyone including the city does need to get serious about recycling!! This new system....not the greatest. Good thing I have my old cans for the overflow. Keeping it all around for a whole week promotes flies and roaches. Lid's been broke on ours for some time. Defective automation or driver/operator. Who replaces the lids or the receptacles and when???? Can you have two cans for those weeks you have a lot extra at times??? They expect you to bag everything?? 6 or 7 13 Gal. bags in stead of one 33 Gal. bag in old cans!! I've seen neighbors with an extra half can of waste on top. Which ends up blowing down the street! One pick/up a week if you miss one .... you're screwed!! I'm not totally against this system but it's got a lot of room for improvement!!

[CL78248]

I love the new blue/brown cans. Some weeks we actually fill the blue one. Most of the time our brown can goes out every other week and it isn't full then. Hope we can reduce landfill requirements!

[hadleyzoo]

We almost ALWAYS fill the blue can. SOMETIMES if I miss putting it out, I can barely make it to the next week. Garbage--eh. I can get away with putting it out once a month. I keep them in the garage and with the lid closed we smell absolutely nothing and have had no problems with roaches/flies other neighbors complain of. And I've got 3 cats and a dog that always need to be cleaned up after too. I personally find the footprint on the new cans not to be too much bigger than the can we used to have for garbage...only thing is now we have two cans to keep rather than one.

[ged_782]

Originally Posted by satx56

Lid's been broke on ours for some time. Defective automation or driver/operator. Who replaces the lids or the receptacles and when????

My block is supposed to be among those converting to the new automated collection system in the next few weeks. The City told us at a neighborhood meeting that they provide and maintain the automated-type receptacles. They said to call 311 if they break. The City will repair or replace the receptacles.

It looks to me at this point like there are tradeoffs with the new garbage collection system, but the automated recycling looks like it would be a significant improvement. 1) The green bins with the manual system are small, and they're open, so stuff sometimes blows out and litters the neighborhood on windy days. 2) The driver likes to stop in the middle of the street and collect multiple bins, empty them, then hurl them back to (hopefully) where they belong. They don't always go back to the right place, and I've ended up with multiples that aren't mine. I just leave them all at the curb until the rightful users collect them. I finally wrote my house number on mine. They broke mine one time when the driver hurled it back and it hit the sidewalk and split open (I saw it happen). 3) Occasionally, they don't get to my my block on the scheduled recycling day; they've always picked it up the following day when this happens. Not sure if automated collection will remedy this one.

[cwh]

Originally Posted by ged_782

3) Occasionally, they don't get to my my block on the scheduled recycling day; they've always picked it up the following day when this happens. Not sure if automated collection will remedy this one.

So far the system has been very reliable as far as not missing pickup days. So far they only time they have missed a day is when a holiday fell in that week. They still crammed all the collections in that week, rather than you just missing a week.

[cwh]

Originally Posted by wCat

OMgosh...I thought we were the only nuts in town to use our old garbage cans for composting! We have three! (not the new ones, mind you... )

Any good way to compost oak leaves?

[wCat]

Originally Posted by cwh

Any good way to compost oak leaves?

Fortunately we don't have a lot of oak leaves right now, but we did have them at a former residence. They are tough little suckers.....like compost kryptonite! We had 19 various fairly mature oaks on our property. The best way to handle them is to mow over them if you can and break them up. The more they are shredded reduced in size the easier they are to break down. Right now, the oaks we do have are manageable, but we try to mix them up a bit before tossing them in.

When we had a really heavy batch of fallen oak leaves, we would keep them separate from the compost. They make a great mulch if you keep them wet. Live oaks are nearly as problematic....but we had a LOT of them. We handled them the same way when the falling leaves were piling up.

[BladeDancer]

All of the recycling is great unless you live in an apartment. I'd love to recycle. There are no recycling services available on site. Makes me feel like an oil spill. With the massive amount of apartment communities in SA it is a real shame. A 'green' apartment community would definately be a selling point for me.

[wCat]

Originally Posted by BladeDancer

All of the recycling is great unless you live in an apartment. I'd love to recycle. There are no recycling services available on site. Makes me feel like an oil spill. With the massive amount of apartment communities in SA it is a real shame. A 'green' apartment community would definately be a selling point for me.

This is an excellent point!...and it's been one of our pet peeves. Dealing with friends and family that live in apts/condo communities and many move in/outs...we've seen the PIA probs with dumpsters overloaded with a ton of recyclable items and even furniture! The newer complexes are so tightly planned to be able to lease the maximum amount of square footage on the property that they are not only cutting back on parking, but there is absolutely NO space to place recycling dumpsters unless they plan for that....and they don't because there is no money in it. The only way to change that is for the public to start ASKING for that AMENITY. Once property managers start getting the message, they'll pony up with that to entice more occupants. Then they might see there are $$$$ in planning this in. Older communities have a bit more advantage in some places because they may actually have some space on the property.

Apartment communities are really missing the boat on this one!