Recycling
But now that Lugo's gone, who goes into it? Matsuzaka?
The kidlet's getting old. I offered to take her for a ride in it before we actually throw anything/anybody in (if you haven't seen them yet - they're so big they have wheels) and she turned me down. This is a kid who used to love getting into a laundry hamper and being taken for a ride around the house.
The new recycling bins arrived at my apartment this morning in JP. I made quick video about them. Read more
Steve Garfield proudly shows off his new wheeled Boston recycling bin, which, as has been noted here in the past (over and over and over again) is large enough to put Julio Lugo in.
The Jamaica Plain Gazette reports the city plans to roll out its 64-gallon mega-recycling bins to every neighborhood in July. With the new bins-on-wheels, residents can just stuff everything, from newspapers to plastics, in. The paper says residents who don't want to deal with recycling carts larger than Mini Coopers can ask the city to take them back after they're delivered and then get recycling stickers to use with a standard-sized trash can.
A letter on City of Boston letterhead went out to some city residents telling them to put out their recycling bins by tomorrow or risk a hefty fine on their real estate tax bill. Fortunately, it was all just a prank.
After a couple months with his new Julio-Lugo-sized recycling dumpsterette, Ed Copp reports he is, in fact, recycling more - just like the city hoped he would:
... Looking back I see why I didn't recycle more. The old bins didn't fit too much. Three days after trash pickup the bin was full so the rest of my recyclables went in the trash. ...
The city can give out all the giant wheeled recycling bins it wants in West Roxbury, Roslindale and JP, but if they make it hard for people in places with lots of apartments to recycle ...
Via Underground Boston.
Karl Stier reports on the new plus-sized bins rolled out across West Roxbury this past week:
... The weight limit is listed at 250 lbs. so one could safely toss Julio Lugo in there and he would finally be dispensed with properly. ...
In Massachusetts, Cambridge is looking into organizing community programming around cluttering and recycling. What cities have such programming organized already?... What web links are there to those cities' programs?... Read more
Boston recently started a pilot program to see if it can increase our fair Hub's somewhat abominable recycling rates by replacing the old blue bins - which require newspapers to be saved separately - with these giant-sized trash-can like things that you can just dump everything (well, everything that's recyclable) into.
Kristie Helms reports from the front lines of the recycling wars - her neighborhood was one of the first to get them:
Easy peasy, yes?
You would think.
But the pilot program has created an uproar on the neighborhood's email list with more than 30 emails since the bins appeared on our curbs a couple of weeks ago. ...

The Holy Name rotary in West Roxbury has become THE place to put up portable signboards, like this one alerting us to the fact that this year, spring yard-waste pickups will be on the same day as recycling pickups. It's right next to the Boston Police flashing signboard that advises motorists to "Say Hi to Your Neighbors."
Jenn Martinelli provides yet more proof of why living on Beacon Hill is not all it's cracked up to be. I'd like to see somebody with a uniform rifling through our trash here in Roslindale.
Eeka wonders: Why doesn't the city just start fining people for placing any recyclable item in the trash?
... Visible recyclables would warrant one of those green tickets affixed to the house like people receive for putting trash out before 5pm in neighborhoods where the city actually cares about such things. The city could easily afford periodic enforcement with the money they'd be saving on landfill service. ...
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