Trego's Mountain Ear

Previously, I wrote that the county health department has been
“treating the symptom, not the problem” and that instead of implementing what is effectively a group punishment, they should be trying to make it easier for people to do this right.

This begs the question: How do we make it easier for people to properly dispose of non-household waste?

The major obstacle that keeps people from disposing of waste properly is the cost in gasoline and time. There are a few ways to address this:

• Reduce the cost/time
• Reimburse the cost/time

I believe a reimbursement program is probably not the best answer (costs being harder to estimate and less fixed), but the county certainly could put a bounty on used appliances or offer a reward to the person with the most non-household waste disposed of appropriately. Reimbursement is relatively easy in terms of logistics and design, provided the county is willing to throw money at the problem.

The more complicated method is cost reduction. How do we effectively bring the landfill to the people? Because ultimately, that’s what needs to happen to reduce the time/gas cost of using it.

Increasing the number of landfill sites (so that there was less time/distance involved in using them) would work, but would be expensive and would also require more landfill sites (which is itself not necessarily good).

Alternatively, sending someone around with a truck and a trailer to drive throughout the county, picking up non-household waste and transporting it would effectively bring the landfill to the people. Instead of having to load a vehicle, drive it, and unload it, the individual now has only to find the time to place the item at the end of their driveway and label it appropriately. There is no longer any benefit to the individual to misuse the green boxes- which means, misuse should decline dramatically

This has the obvious disadvantage of having junk piled at the ends of driveways- however it is a short-term problem with a long term gain of resolving junk accumulation throughout the county (something that the county evidently cares about, given the community decay ordinance). This disadvantage might be addressed by focusing on a different type of junk each month- tires in May and appliances in June or something like it.

It seems that the county will be spending money on this, so if we’re going to be paying for it anyway, we really ought to make sure our money goes to actually dealing with the problem.