by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
I know that the Green Goosesteppers and the Green Gestapo do mean well, but...
I know that they are trying to save the world from itself and preserving it for those who currently need to chew gum and smoke pot simultaneously in order to pass from one hour to the next.
However, I am a little concerned that, as we are all increasingly placed under surveillance, we will soon be called out for our supposed moral, as well as legal, deficiencies. Next will come the green thought police and the general thought police, I should think.
We cannot and must not permit this to happen. But, alas, in many places we have allowed it to happen. The City of Cleveland in the USA is one example.
I have no idea as to whether the city has decided to climb the Mount of Moral High Ground or if they have gone entirely mad. However, the city has begun instituting a technological trash surveillance program that might portend a future in which we will all tremble at the thought that more than 10 percent of our regular trash might have been recyclable.
The City of Cleveland has decided to make an offer that your refuse cannot refuse. It has embedded chips in carts, so that those nice people who take away the trash can monitor how often your recyclable cart has been brought to the curb for servicing.
What next? Well, maybe we should not ask...
Should you fail to wheel out your nice, no doubt green-colored, bin for a few weeks, the trash collectors will dig into your regular trash to see whether it might contain more than the magic number of 10 percent of material that might be actually worthy of recycling. Should your trash show an 11 percent figure, you may be fined $100.
The Cleveland City Council is spending $2.5 million on these high-tech bins, in addition to money it has already spent on a pilot program. And they need to get the money back somehow, I guess.
I have a very emotional relationship to trash. I was once a trash collector but not employed by the local council. We did it private in the countryside and would find radios, fur coats, and all sorts of items that we then sold for quite a considerable amount. In fact it was amazing what one could find and sill can find; in fact maybe more now than ever.
I guess that finances might also be a motivation for the Cleveland City Council to go through resident's trash in search of additional income. The city pays $30 a ton to dump ordinary garbage. It makes, however, $26 a ton by selling recyclables.
So, I guess, it will go some distance for those that will be fined $100 to know that this money will go some way to compensating the city for the revenue it will have lost by the fact that those people have not put their recyclables into the proper receptacle.
Yes, I know sarcasm seems to be getting the better of me yet again but this is all getting rather stupid, does it not.
Recycling might have a much better uptake if the cities and authorities actually would create financial incentives for residents to bring in their recyclables. It works in many other places in the United States but I guess, much like in the UK, they rather fine people than actually pay them for doing the right thing.
For goodness sake we the people must tell those that think they are the powers that be where their place is...
© 2010
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