To the editor:
Am I the only one who feels this new “Pay as You Throw” curbside recycling program isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? I haven’t read the letters to the editor in a while, so maybe it’s just me, but I am frustrated by this new system we have in Presque Isle.
In the old days, you paid a trash hauler to take your garbage, or you bought a dump sticker like me, which was not cheap, and you hauled it to the transfer station yourself. You threw your garbage in the back of the truck, sorted your recyclables, talked a bit with the transfer station guys and any other people you happened to meet there, and drove home. It was a pleasant experience, a Saturday morning ritual for guys like me.
Now, simply taking my trash to the curb has become a pain. You have to cram it into those little orange bags, which often rip at the seams, and hope the crows and critters don’t tear it apart before the trash hauler arrives. Then there’s the matter of those little blue recycling bags, which occasionally are still sitting there when I arrive home.
I admit that I needed a little educating at first: I would put in the wrong kind of no. 1 plastic, or forget to take a cap off, or mix the wrong recyclable in the wrong bag. What happened the other day, however, takes the cake. Before going to work, I placed three blue bags at the curb, and no orange trash bags. “Good for me,” I thought, “I’m doing what this whole program was designed for.” Imagine my displeasure when I arrived home to find the bags still sitting there in the pouring rain. And for what reason? Every bag was properly sorted and cinched up tight. The sticker the hauler put on it said I had forgotten to tie them.
Give me a break. Are you telling me that instead of closing them up tight like I did, I could have left them half open and just tied a little bow and that would have been OK? I’m working to try and recycle more and these guys are refusing to take my stuff for a stupid reason like that?
What really burns me is that on several occasions I’ve seen them simply toss these blue bags, as well as other bags with recyclable glass, right into the back of the truck with the rest of the garbage. What happens then? Does it go to the landfill? Or do the overworked guys at the transfer station have to go through a pile of putrid, stinking mess to sort the recyclable stuff? I thought that recyclables and trash were supposed to be kept separate.
I also thought that this system was supposed to encourage recycling, not discourage it. Yet when I drive around town I see other blue bags left at the curb. I know people who simply stuff everything, recyclables and all, into the orange bags because they got tired of hassling with trash collectors. It makes me long for the days when you could haul your own trash.
A lot of attention has been paid to educating PI residents, maybe more should be spent getting the sanitation guys to use a little common sense.
Paul Lamoreau, Presque Isle
