Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Marxist garbage

You're probably wondering where in the world I'm going with a headline like that, but I just listened to the interview WSPD's Fred Lefebvre did with a representative from Republic, who - through a contract with the county - is the new trash collection provider for the City of Toledo. (interview will be linked when available on WSPD)

Republic is offering a rewards program for recycling through Recyclebank- you earn points for the amount of weight of the recyclables and then, based upon the amount of points, you can get coupons (for example: a $10 off a purchase of $50 at a local department store). This, according to what was said this morning, is how it works:

* each household puts their recyclables in their bins
* each bin has a chip that tracks it to the address and is used to weigh the amount of recyclables being disposed of.
* every route, not every address, will be aggregated for determining the weights.
* the total amount of recyclables collected from each route will determine how many points are awarded to all the households within the route.
* No matter how much you, individually, recycle, all households within the route will earn the same amount of points, based upon the weight.

So, if you're a family of five who recycles a lot and your neighbor is a single older widow who recycles a little, it doesn't matter. You both get the same number of points.

And just for reference, under the city's current program all of Point Place was a 'route.'

It's a 'community' program - a cooperative one, the representative explained, and he hopes that you'll provide friendly pressure to your neighbors to increase their recycling so 'everyone benefits.'

No - it's a Marxist program: from each according to his ability (amount recycled) to each according to his need (for coupons). Or perhaps a 'redistribution of wealth' wherein the benefits are collected and then distributed to all equally regardless of effort to produce said benefits.

Great!

1 comment:

Hooda Thunkit (Dave Zawodny) said...

It all sounds great from Allied's/Republic's side, but I too just see it as even more Marxist Garbage.

Why not play to the individual instead of the "collective" and let the individual merit incentive cause people to more actively recycle?

But, Noooooo..., let's do it the easier way and hope that community spirit will encourage people to recycle more (NOT!).

Maybe instead I'll just take my higher paying recyclables to the scrap dealers and benefit more directly from my recycling efforts.

Yeah, that's the ticket ;-)

That way, my recycling efforts reward me directly. . . (Which is as it should be).

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