Big Brother trash collectors?
p2pnet view Freedom | P2P:- “In recent years, many governments have started to base their trash-pickup fees on volume. If people have to pay for each extra bag of garbage, the thinking goes, they’ll have a strong incentive to produce less of it.”
The paragraph above from Steven D.Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner’s 2009 Super Freakonomics came to mind on reading an item in the Cleveland.com blog passed on by Mike.
“It would be a stretch to say that Big Brother will hang out in Clevelanders’ trash cans, but the city plans to sort through curbside trash to make sure residents are recycling — and fine them $100 if they don’t”, says the story, going on:
“The move is part of a high-tech collection system the city will roll out next year with new trash and recycling carts embedded with radio frequency identification chips and bar codes.”
It continues, “Some cities in England have used the high-tech trash carts for several years to weigh how much garbage people throw out. People are charged extra for exceeding allotted limits.”
But Levitt and Dubner point out charging for garbage collection based on volume also provides an incentive to for people to “stuff their bags ever fuller (a tactic now known by trash officers the world around as the ‘Seattle Stomp’) or just dump their trash in the woods.”
In Germany, they emphasise, “trash-tax avoiders flushed so much uneated food down the toilet that the sewers became infested with rats. A new garbage tax in Ireland generated a spike in backyard trash-burning — which was bad not only for the environment but for public health too: St James’s Hospital in Dublin recorded a near tripling of patients who’d set themselves on fire while burning trash.”
Meanwhile, in Cleveland, on ‘sanitation engineers’ as potential spies, “The chips will allow city workers to monitor how often residents roll carts to the curb for collection”, says Cleveland.com.
“If a chip show a recyclable cart hasn’t been brought to the curb in weeks, a trash supervisor will sort through the trash for recyclables.”
And then …
… and identi.ca
Cleveland.com – High-tech carts will tell on Cleveland residents who don’t recycle … and they face $100 fine, August20, 2010
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August 23rd, 2010 at 11:09 am
Orwell was wrong only on one thing: the year.
August 23rd, 2010 at 1:45 pm
If this was to happen in my city I will stop paying for trash collection and I will perform the trash collection myself littering the
city hall.
Problem solved and money saved.
If enough people do the same I bet you that the city council will change it’s mind after only few days.
August 23rd, 2010 at 7:38 pm
It happened some time ago in Canada: a student got a fine for throwing paper into trash. It happened because she did not shred her documents before throwing paper in the trash.
I am still looking for the specific article – and need your help.
August 24th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
I have lived near Cleveland all my life. Cleveland has been guilty of numerous humiliating news stories; we set both the Cuyahoga river and our mayor’s hair on fire. We hosted one of the few major city bond defaults. And now, despite a virtually bankrupt city and county, Cleveland has rolled out a daffy forced recycling system which will not pay for itself for decades, if ever. Already residents are suggesting destroying the identifying chip to avoid fines. Others suggest token recycling, that is, presenting the insidious bin with only a scavenged can or two each week to be technically compliant. Some of the stories do not make clear that this is only a pilot program. For all its expense, only a small number of Cleveland residents will experience the wonders of forced recycling. Only a few will see (and hopefully tape) the garbageman going through their bag of dog crap, rotted food, used diapers and dead rats as he looks for that elusive soda can or bleach bottle, for that is what they threaten to do to those folks that do not present their recycling bin on a regular basis. The rest will have their garbage picked up the old way by indifferent workers who leave a good portion of it on the curb and refuse to take empty paint cans and tires.