Praxis

In his Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote about a company named Dumpmines which was bought by "Praxis". This company made money by mining old landfills to recover valuable materials.

Sounds like a great idea.

American Waste will soon be doing something like this. They are building a Material Recovery Facility (Facebook link) which will be able to mechanically separate recyclable materials from the incoming trash stream. What this means is even if you forget to sort your recyclables from your trash then ostensibly some of those missed items will still get sorted.

So if Traverse City is going to move ahead with a single waste hauler (though I am not sure this is something that needs to be done) then this ability alone would make American Waste my preferred choice. But add the option to opt-out and to have curbside yard waste pickup and they become the top choice in my opinion. And I have to admit that by allowing niche operators like Bay Area Recycling for Charities to conitnue to operate my ire about this program has been dramatically reduced.

The three proposals only vary by $7.20 per year; but in terms of the time each person needs to dedicate to thinking about and dealing with trash and recycling then this does not seem to be unreasonable as I believe dealing with American Waste will save me over an hour per year (in other words, I'll trade more than one hour of labor at home for paying an extra $7.20 per year to a waste hauler).

Kelly at RecycleChicken has put together a comparison table of the three proposals. Note that the only advertiser at the RecycleChicken web site is American Waste so this may not be a totally unbiased recommendation on their part but this is a good starting point.

The City has more information on the Single Hauler program at their site.

Curbside Composting

Bay Area Recycling for Charities received a grant to bring curbside composting to Traverse City.

And earlier this year I heard a story on NPR about how restaurants are cutting costs with curbside composting: Compost Startup Helps Restaurants Cut Costs

3P has more on this topic: Curbside Composting Programs – Why We Need Them and Where to Start

I look forward to seeing BARC start this soon. What I hear is the compost will be used at The Commons community garden.

Waste Not

This is good news for downtown Traverse City.

RE: Recycling containers headed to downtown TC

And I make use of the ability to recycle all plastic with the containers at Oryana from Bay Area Recycling.

But what I would really like to see in the future is this solar powered trash compaction system from BigBelly Solar.

BigBelly is the world's only solar-powered cordless compaction system. It uses the sun's energy to automatically compact trash at the point of disposal, dramatically increasing capacity by 5 times within the same footprint as ordinary receptacles. Increased capacity reduces collection trips and can cut related fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions by 80%. The enclosed design keeps pests out and litter in. Safe and easy to use, the BigBelly has proven successful in urban streets, parks, colleges, arenas - and in all weather conditions.

The NYT has an article about the city of Somerville, MA adding text messaging ability to these trash cans so they can tell you when they are full. This would be useful during the Cherry Festival when it seems like all the trash cans are full. If only there were a way for Port-A-Potties to send a message when they were full.

See: Big-Bellied, Text-Messaging Trash Cans?