June 27, 2007
Where'd Your Trash Can Go?
Hey, why is Gavin Newsom's face pasted onto an Oscar the Grouch body in that graphic? Because he's taken over 300 trash cans off the streets. Why? Because they had too much garbage in them. We know! It's nutty!
Newsom, in his defense, says that SF has more garbage cans than any other comparable city, and he thinks people are using them to throw away personal or commercial trash instead of signing up for garbage service. (We're looking at YOU, Ed Jew!) "I'm still pro garbage can!" Gavin says, hastily.
Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, though, isn't so pleased, calling for legislative hearings on the issue after getting a bunch of calls from angry constituents wanting their trash cans back. "What's next? Is he going to stop street sweepers from coming around because people are throwing their trash in the street?"
And business folks like always-popular sidewalk hangout Mitchell's Ice Cream say that after their garbage can got taken away, they've been forced as good neighbors to put out a big cardboard box by the store to pick up all the cups and napkins that their customers would otherwise leave behind. "For 35 years that can was there. It was a good can. Now it's gone completely. It doesn't make sense," he lamented.
The city says they'll leave garbage cans by hangout spots like MUNI stops and the like, but want to encourage businesses like Mitchell's to get garbage service instead. Why don't they just have rule-breakers (cough--Ed Jew--cough) get garbage service, but also leave some trash cans outside for folks like us who want to throw our finished cup of Mitchell's Mexican Chocolate ice cream away without going back into the store?
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Please. This is San Francisco. He should be happy the garbage makes it INTO the cans.
Damn you all to hell for not allowing tables in your HTML tags!
Municipalize sanitation! Employ San Franciscans to clean up after San Franciscans.
When trash appears on the streets in east coast cities with municipal sanitation, no matter where it is it gets cleaned up by whatever sanitation truck passes by.
In San Francisco, Gavin Newsom is applying "tough love" to those who evade Sunset Scavenger or Golden Gate waste by denying them their free trash cans. Where will that trash end up?
On the sidewalks! Whee!
Since we live in Gavin's world of "who gives a fuck anyway?" why should we expect anything but polite cocktail party laughter at such an outrageous proposal.
Pass an hours d'ouvre?
-marc
So these trash cans are intended for casual use. What kinda cheap bastards in Jake McGoldrick's and Tom Ammiano's district miss these things so much to call up and complain about it? I'm assuming they're cheap bastards because the only people I can imagine complaining are folks that have been freeloading on the City's dime to get rid of their house or business trash.
I'm not sure this is going to work, but I follow the logic.
If you set up a nice plant in front of your home, and homeless people keep killing it by using it as a bathroom ... are you going to keep putting plants up? Only if you're a friggin' idiot.
ENOUGH with this BS about Mitchell's ice cream. The taxpayers of SF shouldn't have to provide garbage service to a private business whose patrons BY DEFINITION walk out with at least a napkin and often a cup and spoon that will need discarding. Let Mitchell's buy their own damn garbage can and pay for the removal of its contents!
If my memory serves me correctly, and google maps street view is up to date, there are three trashcans on Fillmore between Turk and Golden Gate in front of the northern district police station.
I like mitchell's too, but fuck them if they can't pay for their own garbage removal service. I have to wait an hour when I go there in the freezing rain... so don't try to tell me that their business is actually hurt by the city making them be responsible for the garbage their customers generate.
I am totally for a reduction in public waste receptacles. Frankly, more garbage is on the streets b/c of them. When they overflow, when someone digs through them, when businesses and residents use them as their personal depositories, when drunk ass motherscratchers piss in them - And have I mentioned mattresses? Public receptacles just create little autonomous zones where it is ok for waste to gather. We need more trash cans like we need big gaping holes in the sidewalk to store our raw sewage.
I think that much like traffic lights, and training wheels, we don't need them as much as we'd like to believe. Folks who are going to litter are going to litter if there is a can nearby or not.
The streets will not be less clean. No the sky is not falling. Until then, I am just going to cancel my sunset scavenger bill and head on over to san jose and 29th and make a little drop off.
If you had of went to the last FQT you would of learned that this is a part of a replacement project.
You have to admit that this style of trash depot is not antiseptically astute with the decor of the new San Francisco.
The Examiner just reported that Gavvie-Baby wants to eliminate bus stops next--It's simply a case of "The less you do, the LESS YOU CAN DO WRONG!
Either we pay to clean it up or we pay to enforce it when people don't clean up or chuck trash on the sidewalk.
Self righteous outrage does not keep the City clean.
-marc
you go gavin! let's get rid of all the free magazine and news stands now too. make them get permission to stack them inside businesses at business hours to minimize the homeless using them all for bedding.
So, wait- let me get this straight. When I'm walking down the street with 5 extra pounds of receipts, empty bottles, power bar wrappers, and plastic bags from my trips to numerous stores... I'm just gonna have to keep all that with me until I come across a MUNI stop?
Um, no thank you.
I have a wonderful, magical idea that will have Gavin's approval ratings through the roof (with me, anyway)!
LET'S GET THE GARBAGE CANS BACK!
OMGWOW I KNOW. CLEVER IDEA, EH?
Jess Drake
(I'll get my membership eventually)
Wouldn't it just be easier to pass a law that all businesses must have garbage service? That way the City would get some more money and all those public garbage cans won't be as full.
And if they are so worried about garbage cans overfilling, then just have more frequent garbage pickups!!! The extra money that the city receives from the garbage service law could be used to pay for more frequent pickups.
jen
Let me get this straight...Gavin wants some garbage cans removed from the street...this must be another "one of my ideas I thought up while on the toliet" kinda like his Free Muni and dating actresses. If you think about it the thought process makes complete sense because then all of SF can go down the can ...so to speak.
Think of the Tourist won't you Gavin!
In the Mission, there is more household trash than sunset scavenger receptacles provided by landlords and homeowners.
You do the math.
In addition to trash hauling operatives who site their dumps to strategic corners, residents often put their household trash out on the streets or in the public receptacles.
The cost to police this would be more than the costs of firing Norcal Solid Waste (a Willie L. Brown, Jr. client) and replacing it with public trash.
Combine this with CCA, and when you turn on the lights the bus comes filled with trash. Just kidding.
-marc
over here in south beach, the folks that have yachts walk out of their docks and fill up the city/port authority trash cans almost every day. i'm tired of anyone getting a free ride in this town. you go gavin.
you are the man.
fuck them all!
Take some responsibility for your neighborhood - give your neighbors hell if you see them tossing trash around the street like they could care less what your visitors/YOU have to walk through/look at. Why does the City have to do everything for you, Ms. Paris Hiltons?
Chris Daly - here's a way to get some positive PR. Require landlords to have a trash and recycle bin for every 2-3 units rented out.
People with dogs - this isn't an excuse to not pick up poop. Do what you have to do to be responsible.
Grow the heck up and take care of yourselves, Jesus Christ.
For such a green city, why hasn't anybody asked how this will affect recycling efforts?
The city is trying to get to 0% waste, so reducing trash cans might be an effort to that lofty goal.
With people relying on public trash cans, they don't feel the incentives for recycling - lower trash bills, primarily.
I'm guessing putting public recycling bins is just a disaster waiting to happen because recyclables are easily 'contaminated'.
And why is everybody missing the operating cost of these garbage cans?? The papers keep comparing the cost of each garbage can vs. the cost of taking these away and storing them, but where's the labor to pick up the trash, the number of garbage trucks on the roads, the logistics of the pick-ups, the stress on the landfills...? Trash pick-up isn't rocket science, but the math isn't as simplistic as the papers are reporting.
"take some responsibility for your neighborhood - give your neighbors hell if you see them tossing trash around the street like they could care less what your visitors/YOU have to walk through/look at. Why does the City have to do everything for you, Ms. Paris Hiltons?"
like me and at least one other have said. some (and i'm guessing its a large number) residents do not have suitable trash containers provided by their landlord. this paired with the fact that the people you PAY to collect your garbage will not pick up anything that is not physically in the container, as in you cannot lean a bag against the container..and any bags that fall off the large pile on top or are ripped apart by homeless people are left to fill the street and sidewalk with trash.
by your opinion i should then go and pick up all of this trash? f-that, the people being PAID should pick up all trash that is left on the curb and the city should enforce a certain number of trash containers based on the number of occupants in a building.
Here's a nice way to stop litterbugs:
Stop putting ads on car windows. Ever been around SF State lately and parked on the streets? They keep putting these postcard size ads on people's vehicles, sometimes there's five various events stuck on your mirror.
Is Jake McGoldrick the only person at City Hall who has been around for more than 5 minutes??
The reason the City put all the garbage cans on the sidewalks oh so many years ago was that people were leaving garbage on those sidewalks and some residents, at least, were tired of looking at it and being forced to climb over it. Why in the world would anyone think that removing gargage cans will eliminate the garbage problem??
Unfortunately, the City fell down on the second part of the solution way back then -- by failing to require all businesses and residential buildings to provide adequate containers for garbage. The City could also do what NY does -- hire someone to go through obvious household garbage that's been placed in sidewalk trash containers, look for envelopes with the violator's name and address, and haul the violator in for a court hearing and a fine.
If the landlord doesn't supply the needed trash cans (assuming you're not running a restaurant out of your rental unit part-time or a frat house and have a freakishly large amount of trash every week), you could start by telling the landlord you need more trash capacity - another can. Simple solutions .... not much more effort than shrugging your shoulders and blaming, how does Chris Daly say/write it, "Gavin Christopher Newsom" for your lack of balls.
"If the landlord doesn't supply the needed trash cans (assuming you're not running a restaurant out of your rental unit part-time or a frat house and have a freakishly large amount of trash every week), you could start by telling the landlord you need more trash capacity - another can. Simple solutions .... not much more effort than shrugging your shoulders and blaming, how does Chris Daly say/write it, "Gavin Christopher Newsom" for your lack of balls."
obviously you have not had to deal with the shitty landlords that inhabit the mission. the entire building has asked multiple times. and when each unit has 5 bedrooms, a freakish amount of trash does accumulate from the whole building. with 6 units in the building, thats 30 bedrooms and 6 kitchens worth of trash.
and to follow up. i assume the reason they ignore the suggestions is that it will cost them more money. it should be a requirement that every unit has its own bin.
I give up ... throw it on the street ... who cares.
Proper enforcement would go a long way there. But the likes of Marc don't want SF to crack down on "SF's most vulnerable" who are some of the worst litterbugs.
$200 fine per incident, cigarette butts included, with automatic community service for anyone unwilling or unable to pay, and no fucking Traffic Court throwing out the tickets when the Coalition for Homelessness shows up but Kamala does not, will make a huge difference.
.. i second that... and allow citizens to help enforce via video tape/camera phone.
Ridiculous. I imagine most people, like me, have trash cans at home and at work. But often are, uh, somewhere else and would like an appropriate place to put our trash and/or recycling. Perhaps the folks visiting from Omaha or Paris would too.
I like the "lazy environmentalists" approach to this sort of thing. Guilt and extremism just won't get it done.
I saw a presentation of his, and he mentioned a company that was incenting people with a program that was sort of like an airline "Frequent Flyer" setup. Recycle more, get more points, use them to get stuff. That's the right idea
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Bill Eater
Lower my bills