Detroit Recycles! So what?

In many parts of Detroit, Michigan you can see them today: pretty blue containers which proudly announce, Detroit Recycles! They're very proud of themselves, those blue plastic cans. You can almost smell the conceit.

Yes, conceit. Detroit now has curbside recycling. The city has surely turned itself around. Now it's a part of the modern day feel good trend and underwrites the trash of those who want it so. That's what it is, trash, and nothing more.

It cannot be said enough that what is worth recycling gets recycled. Iron, copper, aluminum, they get recycled. In part, probably, we'll say, in the greatest part, because something tangible can be had from them: cash. The people with old scrap steel can get money for it from the private, unlike the people who get our tin cans and old plastic milk jugs. They only get money because their cause is underwritten by the government. Even then they need massive amount of plastic and glass to get by.

We will say it: we have no problems with incinerators and landfills. We see no verifiable spike in cancers due to burning our garbage and we do not see zombies walking stutter step out of landfills. Who ought to fear zombies anyway? They so slow that it boggles the mind how so many horror show victims fall prey to them. Still, from the cries of the no landfill folks you would think they were a real threat.

There would be little or no recycling without a government somewhere underwriting the process. There is further nothing wrong with individuals expecting something out of it which benefits them directly. If you want to recycle and can find a source for it outside the public sphere, go for it. We don't care. But we're just a bit tired of paying taxes for something simply not worth it. Recycling so far as we're concerned, Michigan, only takes money away from well, let's just say roads. If the state and the cities would spend less on feel good projects and more on what is really in the general interest, we think our roads would be quite fine.

Private Trash Collection good for Detroit

Shape up, Detroit, and get yourselves in gear. Your trash, it appears, will actually get picked up on time nowadays. One aspect of the city's bankruptcy has been an attempt to get more bang for the buck in terms of services. Detroit's trash pickup has always been lacking, in some cases to the point where collection was as much as two or three working days late. But now that trash collection has been privatized it looks as though a new leaf has been turned.

In the Woodbridge area of Detroit, residents were expected to have their garbage picked up anytime after 7AM on Fridays. No one took the timing seriously, for it rarely mattered: the actual pickup would be at least well into the morning if not the few days late already mentioned. Yet today the trucks of Rizzo Environmental Services were patrolling area streets almost right at 7. Neighbors running late were scampering to get their trash cans out ahead of the garbage trucks. Rizzo has the contract for most of southwest, central, and east Detroit; Advanced Disposal will cover most of the west side of town.

There will be regular weekly collection of normal household trash, and regular bi-weekly collection in season of yard waste and all year for bulk items. Before, yard waste was often left in the streets and on the curbs in Woodbridge, and bulk collections were only 4 times a year. For those into it, for the first time in Detroit history there will be curbside collection of recyclables, albeit for a one time $25 fee. All of this simply because garbage collection is privately run. All of it after Kwame Kilpatrick had an added $300 charge to city residents' property tax to pay for better trash service which was never really delivered.

This is a prime example of where private initiative trumps public intentions. The city can't pick up trash on its own because it has no real competition, while Rizzo and Advanced Disposal know they will be, ah, kicked to the curb if they don't live up to expectations. We see the effects of that in the garbage trucks out and about right when they're supposed to be.

Privatization works. In the long, it will improve Detroit in more ways and manners than garbage collection too.