
An outraged citizen complains he's been forced to label his trash to try to keep the neighborhood can collectors from ripping his bags open:
How can we fix the fact that I have to put this on my trash bags? I use the right bags and pack properly. Everything after trash day I need to clean up outside my house. These people just come along and poke through bags looking for cans. They don't care about the trash left behind. Just frustrating to a tax payer that wants to keep his neighborhood clean.
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Comments
Ugh
By MostlyHarmless
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 10:41pm
These are people who are so desperate to make ends meet, they'll dig through your trash for 5 cents. How about instead of pearl-clutching, you help them out? Get another barrel and label it "HERE ARE MY CANS".
Maybe some people turn in their own cans for money?
By anon
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 10:50pm
Every little bit adds up.
That doesn't always work
By SwirlyGrrl
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 10:55pm
Before we got our dumpstercans, we had people ripping bags open. Even when we put the cans and bottles out and labeled them? The second gleaner to come through would still rip stuff open.
Meh
By MostlyHarmless
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:18am
Worked for me in Allston.
Um, you're missing the point
By anon
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 11:15pm
People rip through the bags regardless of whether or not there are cans/bottles in them. Trash gets everywhere. I once asked a lady not to go in my neighbour's yard to go through the trash. She threw a can of root beer at my front door.
Awww.
By MostlyHarmless
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 12:02pm
That must have been very traumatic for you.
Are you
By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:51am
really suggesting people in the neighborhood not only pack their trash and recycling properly (as the person who filed the complaint claims they do), but also in a manner that caters to people who pick through it? That's ridiculous. Also, if the person(s) digging through doesn't care about leaving a mess behind and/or is that in need, do you really think they wouldn't dig through everything anyway?
And pearl clutching? I can't speak for the person who filed the complaint, but personally, I don't mind if people dig through my trash and am glad to have them take my cans or anything else they may find useful. The issue at hand is that the people doing it are leaving trash everywhere. We already have a few trash collectors that can't seem to get it all in the truck, nor do they care that they can't do so, and a lot of neighborhood residents that just throw their losing scratch tickets on the sidewalk, this is only adding to the problem.
Possible solution
By kuntmissioner
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 6:34am
Clear plastic refuse bags may prevent the needy from needlessly ripping through this citizen's garbage.
Clear plastic bags are
By anon
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:57am
Clear plastic bags are required for recycling in my neighborhood. Building gets fined if they're not used and consequently the individual tenents get fined.
Better solution
By johnmcboston
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 7:27am
Get rid of the outdated bottle bill....
YES!
By JP Resident
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 8:08am
How I dream of the day. Alas, in this crazy moobat collection we call a Commonwealth, it will never come to pass.
I've been to a place with no bottle deposit
By JimGaffigan
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 1:49pm
Santo Domingo to be precise.
Walk along the malecon (road along the water) and you will see nothing but plastic bottles littering what should be a beautiful stretch of water. Im talking thousands of bottles strewn along the shore.
If those bottles had a deposit, I can guarantee you they would be gone over night.
https://www.travelblog.org/Photos/4238988
Wow, good point!
By Scratchie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 1:57pm
I guess Santo Domingo is the only place in the world without a bottle deposit, so it's the only possible point of comparison. Makes perfect sense. I suppose that also implies that if Massachusetts eliminated the bottle deposit, the state would turn into an international sex tourism destination.
In fact...
By lbb
Thu, 08/13/2015 - 10:57am
...the Mass bottle bill supposedly resulted in about a 30% reduction in litter (and also increased safety due to less broken glass).
Why is it outdated?
By anon
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 8:44am
It's been noticeably much cleaner here, litter-wise, compared to pre-bottle bill days. The bottle bill has done what it was supposed to do very well.
Back then there was not a
By MattyC
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:20am
Back then there was not a societal predisposition towards separating recyclables, nor curbside recycling pickup. Now we have both, in spades. The bottle bill serves only 2 populations: the people who return their own bottle for deposit, getting back the money they left at the counter the last time, and people who rummage through trash looking for nickels. The former population would not be affected by cancelling the deposit, they would just forevermore be at the net-zero gain/loss that they strive to get back to today. The latter will stop tearing apart my fucking trash if it becomes worthless.
You left out the most
By Refugee
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 11:29am
You left out the most important beneficiary of the Bottle Bill which is state politicians who don't want the hassle of balancing a budget without the revenue from unredeemed containers.
^^ This
By ElizaLeila
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 1:02pm
One of the localities ( I can't remember which) wanted to make trash picking illegal because they actually include a line item in their budget for monies collected from unredeemed 'nickles'.
Why a municipality would count on that to help balance the books is beyond me.
And right now...
By lbb
Thu, 08/13/2015 - 11:01am
...we got a lot of young'uns posting on the internet who weren't around before the Bottle Bill, or who were too young to remember, and yet are sure they know all about what things used to be like.
$$
By johnmcboston
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:22am
Because when it was introduced, there were no recycling programs, and cans were the easiest thing to recycle.
Now that most towns have recycling, and recycle a lot more than cans, there's really no reason to extort money out of me any more because you assume my can or bottle will end up on your curb. And, all the trash that ends up on the street due to pickets, as this thread points out. The can is now off the street, but the rest of my garbage is now everywhere because a picker thought there might be a can in my trash and opened it up to look...
If you really wanted clean streets, you could put a deposit on cigarette butts, snack bags and coffee cups, as I see many more of those on streets and in parks than water bottles or non-deposit cans.
if people recycled it wouldnt be an issue
By anon
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:10am
If many people didn't put recyclables in the trash, even with curbside recycling available in many cities (not as many as the supermarket lobby claimed, however 1.), people wouldn't be going through the trash to find them. The fact is that people are throwing away recyclables, which costs taxpayers more to process as trash than recycling them. Recycling should be mandatory statewide because it is the most efficient way to deal with trash, and these problems would no longer be issues.
1. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/29/propon...
Noticeably cleaner? This
By Refugee
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 11:26am
Noticeably cleaner? This whole thread is about how the deposit system creates litter.
The bottle bill worked great in the 1980's and 1990's. Today, better off without it.
This
By Scratchie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 11:38am
Just had to quote this for truth:
That is
By MattyC
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:01am
the only actual solution in this thread.
How about another
By SwirlyGrrl
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 11:15am
For dense urban areas where it is difficult to store garbage or use dumpster cans, the city might consider the sort of garbage/recycling stations seen in many areas of Europe.
Then, when your bag is full, you simply walk to the nearest collection area, and trash is never just left out on the street.
So Needed
By BlackKat
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 3:07pm
For every building with a lid-protected dumpster [rat prevention] there is two more without room in their lot/alley for a dumpster. And many of those buildings do not use cans either [although they should]. The trash gets dropped on the curb the night before pickup. Not only is it a rat feast day, but the sidewalk is blocked physically and by a cloud of miasma.
NIMBY
By johnmcboston
Thu, 08/13/2015 - 9:25am
We've discussed such things. Two issues:
1) Whose home gets 'stuck' with such containers on the street in front of it (even if it is clean and smell free)
and ) "OMG lost parking spots! Over my dead body".
Agreed
By Scratchie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:17am
The fact that enough people are still throwing their cans in the trash to make it worthwhile to go house-by-house and rip open the garbage shows how useless the bottle bill is.
Or maybe
By ElizaLeila
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 1:06pm
it's because the majority of recycling centers closed and stores only take back what they sell (eg Stop and Shop will only take soda or sparkling water cans/bottles).
So most find the routine of returning them a burden.
My father, however, used to save his (Maine - $0.10/bottle or can) and give them to the volunteer fire department in his town which if I recall correctly, was actually a collection point for the Boy Scout Troop.
Horrible idea
By anon
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:19am
Go down to the south and look along roads in states without bottle deposits- tons of cans and tires. The deposit works- even if you do not return the cans for the money, someone will.
Not true in the southern
By Scratchie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:53am
Not true in the southern state where I live. The same "Adopt a Highway" people who pick up cigarette packs and McDonald's bags pick up the empty bottles and cans.
False equivalence
By lbb
Thu, 08/13/2015 - 11:03am
"Adopt a Highway" is sort of cool, but it treats the symptom, not the problem. Picking up litter isn't the same as preventing it in the first place.
Bottle bill works both ways
By downtown-anon
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:33am
Living in the city I see how it can increase the trash problem with bottle and can pickers, but I think it helps some out away from the city (although wouldn't make a difference in Concord where they want to ban plastic bottles (did the bill go through - I can't keep track)).
To answer my own question:
By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:01am
From an East Boston resident Facebook group:
"...I put my bottles in a separate bag, but the next person goes through the bags!"
Agree that the financial
By Kinopio
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:26am
Agree that the financial geniuses who buy stacks of scratch tickets like to show off all the money they wasted by littering their scratch tickets all over the place. So damn annoying.
What always gets me
By ChrisInEastie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:50am
is that I'm pretty sure these all offer "second chance" drawings if you send your tickets in or go online or something.
Which is the problem with
By roadman
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 11:35am
the system - you have to send your tickets in. Perhaps if we had a better program, like turn in ten used tickets and get a new one for free. Then we might have a reasonable chance of reducing the flotsam of spent scratch tickets.
The other thing we need to consider, apart from the downsizing of scratch games as I described below, is actively reducing the number of Lottery agents. Lottery availability at every store within a stone's throw is another aspect of the system that is idiotic.
Remember in the 1990's when
By Refugee
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 11:37am
Remember in the 1990's when the Mass Lottery had a redemption program for losing scratch tickets? People made a living out of collecting unredeemed tickets. The program was so popular, that once the lottery did a redemption "event" at the Hatch Shell which jammed up traffic on Storrow Drive. Finally the lottery cancelled the program, but they did it on short notice a long time after their last redemption event, leaving ticket collectors with tons of meticulously sorted and bundled tickets, suddenly worthless.
Such sign should also be
By maria c
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 6:29am
Such sign should also be written in multi native languages.
Pearl-clutching?
By WhatTheBins
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:19am
Wanting to keep one's neighborhood clean is in no way "pearl-clutching."
No
By MostlyHarmless
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 12:01pm
Being more upset at the consequences of our society's inability to provide a functional social safety net than the fact that our society is unable to provide a functional social safety net is, though.
Oh boy another problem out of
By gotdatwmd
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 2:54pm
Oh boy another problem out of the hands of any one individual but somehow is the individual's fault if they DARE complain.
UGH BUT SOCIETY is the armchair activist's general complaint towards anyone that is angry or upset
Have done that, and...
By Hyde_Parker
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:13am
have had no success. They still dig through the trash, and then leave everything all jumbled up. It got to the point where I would wait until the absolute last minute to put out the trash and recycling to avoid the digging.
Strangely, where I now live, the trash pickers don't seem to have this problem. There isn't a returnable container left for the recycling trucks, but there isn't trash strewn all over the place, either. I don't know what the difference is.
Alternatively...
By Bob Leponge
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:44am
There are people so desperate to make ends meet, they will break into your car for the change you keep in the cupholder. How about you help them out by leaving the car unlocked?
Yeah!
By MostlyHarmless
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 11:58am
Digging through your garbage to squeak out a living is totally like committing a felony! Brilliant analogy!
So desperate to make ends
By anon
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:55am
So desperate to make ends meet or so desperate to pay for their next fix? I think you're the pearl clutcher here. Don't live in a city, do you. Plenty of us have tried leaving the bags open, the result is that the contents just get dumped out. One of the guys who does it in our neighborhood drives right down the alley, stopping at each building and dumps out every bag. My window faces the alley -- I see it all the time. He's not driving a piece of crap either. I know people who work pretty damn hard to pay to live in the city and they can't afford a car. Think about it.
Post your address
By bulgingbuick
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 11:14am
and we'll send them over to visit your trash.
You're assuming the person
By baustin
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 12:36pm
You're assuming the person has cans or bottles that can be redeemed. I'm guessing they just have a bag of regular, unredeemable trash.
No trash pickers....
By Illegal means i...
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 8:02pm
They have already been supplied with a separate container...it's called the recycling bin. Stay out of the damn trash bags! Sorry your life is tough, but that doesn't mean you get to turn everyone's front stoop into a garbage dump.
idea
By cybah
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 10:48pm
If you have a cat, put the used litter (especially the pissed on litter) at the top. The Ammonia smell will prevent them from digging at all.
No cat, put two cap fulls of ammonia in the bag will also work
Signed, someone who has the same problem and was tired of sweeping after trash pick up also.
That Doesn't Always Work
By Elmer
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 11:14pm
Garbage gleaners can be undeterred by foul odors and may merely scatter the bag contents in search of redeemable containers.
it works
By cybah
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 11:13pm
It works for the ones near me in Chelsea.. *shrug*
I put used litter and dog
By Bee
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 8:38am
I put used litter and dog crap bags all over the top of my trash. It seemed to help a bit. We recycle, so everything is in our recycling bin, but they still rip open our trash and leave the area filthy. I don't give a flying poo if they take my bottles, but I will bust a cap if I catch someone making my street filthy. Is it too much to ask that the needy respect the area like everyone else should? Just because you collect cans doesn't mean you have to be a burden to the city.
Ahm.
By Victoria
Thu, 08/13/2015 - 10:50am
Ok the pet waste bit is GRO-DY!
But as a homeowner in Lower Allston (so similar) the worst is when you have put everything out nicely packed, separated, and labeled, then somebody rips through your trash, THEN inspectional services comes through and issues a trash ticket.
To pre-empt - trash tickets go on your property record and can be used against you in the future.
It would be great if there was an awesome solution to bag ripping and I think the can collectors work very hard. Some people are just dirty.
A good solution is...
By SoBo-Yuppie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:48am
Don't put your trash out overnight. My neighbors only put their trash out the morning of pick up. This avoids having trash bags sit on the sidewalk for 12 hours for rats, raccoons, the weather and the less fortunate to mess with.
It's not a perfect solution but pretty damn good. Ever since we started doing that our street is a lot cleaner after trash day.
People still rip stuff in the AM
By Grizzly Mama
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:55am
I wait until the morning to put out my trash, but people still troll in the morning. It's neverending. Even trash bags in trash bins get pulled out and ripped open then left on the ground.
Like i said..
By SoBo-Yuppie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 12:16pm
not a perfect solution but it does reduce the chances that trash is going to be strewn all over the street.
It worked for us. give it a shot.
until
By cybah
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:12am
Until I put a lock on the side gate, the bottle collectors would go down my alley and rifle thru my trash anyways.
I see
By Scumquistador
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 11:21pm
Both sides of this. I sympathize with those desperate enough to need to do this but also the littering is unacceptable. I've had luck with positive dialogue and just trying to be human. This won't always work, obviously.
The streets of East Boston
By MP
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 11:27pm
The streets of East Boston are disgusting. The reason that trash is blowing around everywhere is because of these people tearing bags open. At best, they tear a tiny hole and leave it facing upward so that Capitol Waste sees it. But most of the time they tear a huge hole, then roll the bag aside to get to the one underneath it, letting trash spill out all over the sidewalk. On several occasions I've seen small bags and boxes just dumped right out onto the sidewalk.
And the idea that one can just put out a separate bag/box labeled "cans and bottles" just doesn't work. The second, third, fourth person will still rip open whatever's left.
It's surprising that nothing is done to stop people from doing this. Doesn't the city realize where all this trash on the streets is coming from? It's not like people are driving around throwing it out of their car windows, or people are just routinely littering as they walk down the sidewalk. Seriously- watch one of these trash scavengers operate for half a block or so and you'll be disgusted at what you see.
Actually they are
By apkmax
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 1:09am
scratching their lottery tickets and just throwing them on the ground. I pick up off the sidewalk about 5 to 10 every day walking home from Maverick. The lottery should have a 5 cents credit for every non-winning ticket.... collect 20 and get a free $1 scratch ticket. I've lived in many parts of the city and feel like East Boston is the scratch ticket capital. Anyone know if we can get ticket sale stats by city neighborhood?
2nd change drawing
By Rob
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 7:20am
The lottery does this to some extent already.
http://www.masslottery.com/vip/
You can enter in the numbers off lising tickets for a chance to win.
Chelsea
By cybah
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 8:16am
You haven't been to Chelsea have you... I see scratch tickets all over the streets. Its an epidemic. I wish the state would do what you suggest. tired of seeing so many tickets just discarded everywhere.
Won't help
By anon
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 8:44am
If there's a five cent credit on non-winning tickets, the scavengers will be ripping open bags looking for them, too.
That sounds like a fine idea.
By MattyC
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:03am
That sounds like a fine idea.
The State lottery prey on the
By ZD
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:12am
The State lottery prey on the poor of East Boston, And they certainly know that the poor who are struggling to make ends meet are the ones who will spend the most money, they have it down to a science, even the illegal immigrants of East Boston are spending their money like water on the lottery, you can see it in every convinience store in the neighborhood.
The lottery preys on the poor
By MattyC
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:23am
The lottery preys on the poor. In the animal kingdom, this would be described as a line of bunnies hopping their way to the lion den, seeing signs that say "Lion ahead, $5." Forgive me if i leave the violin in the case.
Maybe PBS (WGBH) Frontline
By Will
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 9:32am
Maybe PBS (WGBH) Frontline should do a documentary about people who spend half their earnings on lottery tickets in poor neighborhoods like East Boston.
Being poor is no excuse for
By Kinopio
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:31am
Being poor is no excuse for throwing your scratch tickets on the ground though.
Maybe not
By Scratchie
Wed, 08/12/2015 - 10:39am
But being a Masshole is.
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