ESTÚPIDO SAVANNAH - Tuesday, June 23, 2009 7:44:43 PM
More supposed recycling “facts”
Both the Savannah Morning News and the Confused Savannah… what? Oh. Sorry, Connect Savannah. Anyway both of them have recycling stories in this week’s editions.
Is it earthday again and nobody told me?
Despite the headline in the SMN theirs is not a Recycling IQ test. It is just more propaganda and questionable claims:
“But nearly six months into the city's curbside recycling program - which has achieved a 50 percent participation rate - chances are also good that some items still confound you, even if you're a dedicated recycler.”
Notice it doesn’t say “fifty percent of households recycle regularly” which would be impressive. No they claim that at some point in the last 6 months they hit fifty percent.
I would like to see HARD numbers on that. Someone please give me a simple, Total Households /Recycling Households equation. It would look like this TH – RH = X, simple.
I think if we were actually getting anywhere close to 50% on a regular basis they would have a parade.
No the city (and Connect Savannah) would rather talk about the total amount of material that is being recycled and compare it to the total amount being recycled before we all had trucks coming to each of our houses to pick it up for us. That is disingenuous and says absolutely nothing about whether we are getting our money’s worth out of the program for which we pay.
Connect also fell into printing questionable facts such as:
“Recycling one aluminum can is the equivalent energy savings to run a computer for three hours."
Here are those HARD facts I love so much.
Desktop with 17’ LCD monitor run for 6 hours = 1 KWh
1 KWh = 3413 British thermal units (Btu)
1 Recycled Aluminum Can = 350 Btu
Energy Saved by Recycling Aluminum Can = 6650 Btu
So actually one aluminum can is the equivalent energy savings to run a desktop computer for at least 10 hours. With the same aluminum can you could run a laptop for two days.
Oh and that: “Currently only about 45 percent of Georgians are committed recyclers”
How is that even possible when less than 45 percent of people in the state have a curbside program and those without one hardly if ever recycle? According to the numbers provided by our city, Savannah recycled 60 times less stuff before the program came into play.
One explanation for the seeming exaggeration is that the “45%” number comes from a survey where people were asked how much they recycle. Oh yes! We should definitely quote that as absolute gospel because we know people always tell the truth on surveys, right?
Why not actually do a survey of municipal systems to see how many households actually are recycling? Oops! There I go again asking for HARD facts.
I did like that the Connect story was a bit more market driven. I find that far more interesting than the touchy feely “Do it for the Planet” BS. If we were truly interested in saving the planet then we wouldn’t be so lazy and we wouldn’t need to have city taxpayers subsidize the program that allows us to continue to consume at unsustainable levels while feeling like we do no harm.
Speaking of market forces, I would like to see how much money Pratt has paid the city so far for the tons of crap we have delivered to them. Again I would like hard numbers, an audit of the program if you will.
SMN also went with some soft numbers on the effort to impose a costly recycling program on the unincorporated area of Chatham County.
“…an effort to get more local residents pondering curbside recycling with a petition for the service countywide. It's garnered more than 5,400 signatures online and on paper at about 60 area businesses since April.”
First, this ain’t a petition to get county-wide recycling it is only “In unincorporated portions of the county, waste services shall include single-stream curbside recycling of glass, plastic, aluminum, newspapers and magazines.”
Second, did the reporter count these signatures? Online they
have collected just more than 1600
signatures and not all of those are
eligible to sign since they don’t live in the unincorporated portions of the
county.
Just on the first page, out of 50 addresses, I recognized at
least 10 that are inside Savannah. If that percentage of bad signatures stays consistent
over the entire petition they got bupkis chance of getting the 16 thousand they
need.
See John McMasters comments. Apparently the way they are trying to get the recycling issue on the ballot is to do an end run around the people who will actually have to pay for it.
He and his cronies intend to let the majority impose taxes just on the minority who live in the unincorporated areas.
Everybody votes but only those who live in the unincorporated area will pay.
That is certainly easier than asking for support from those who must actually pay the higher price.
Shameful!
Comments
O.C.G.A. § 36-70-24 Special Service District rules
(3)(A) The strategy shall ensure that the cost of any service which a county provides primarily for the benefit of the unincorporated area of the county shall be borne by the unincorporated area residents, individuals, and property owners who receive the service. Further, when the county and one or more municipalities jointly fund a county-wide service, the county share of such funding shall be borne by the unincorporated residents, individuals, and property owners that receive the service.
Ga. Const. Art. VII, § I, Para. III
taxes must be uniform(a) All taxes shall be levied and collected under general laws and for public purposes only. Except as otherwise provided in subparagraphs (b), (c), (d), and (e), all taxation shall be uniform upon the same class of subjects within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax.
Ga. Const. Art. IX, § II, Para. I
No amendment hereunder shall be valid if inconsistent with any provision of this Constitution or if provision has been made therefor by general law.
People lie about recycling. Starbucks has/had (I don't fellowship there anymore) a recycling petition and I asked the Starbucks gurl why they want you to sign the recycling petition when they (starbucks) don't recycle themselves and the coffee gurl said that they DO recycle. A quick trip around back proved that the Starbucks gurl was somehow confused cuz they don't have recycling containers anywhere for their brand name garbage. The crazy thing is that Starbucks wants you to sign a petition for curbside recycling yet it is something they won't do on their own. I asked the district manager Dan Jones if Starbucks would allow a curbside gay marriage petition to appear in the store and he would not agree to that request yet defended their promotion of the curbside recycling petition. Many of the recycling providers and programs you can name today will not exist in the future. Look at California and also Georgia. How long do you think the tax payers will put up with layoffs of teachers and the closure of state parks and libraries and on and on but continue funding for garbage recycling? My opinion is that this recession will do more for the environment than anything the recycling crowd has accomplished in the last 20 years. In other words, I believe that most of the efforts by the recycling crowd have been a waste of time, energy and resources.
While I appreciate the vigilance, and apologize for offending your journalistic sensibilities, I do have to say that your rage over the mis-calculation of energy savings from recycling an aluminum can seems a little reactionary.
First of all, your calculation is for a computer with an LCD screen, which not everyone has, and which uses less electricity than their tube-lit predecessors. Energy-use among appliances is a big variable. The 3-hour/can number came from Randy Hartmann, Director of the DCA's Office of Environmental Management, and I don't know what type of computer or monitor they used to calculate that number. Regardless, your independent research only seems to validate the importance of recycling, considering your number more than triples the impact stated in my article.
As for the 45% of Georgians who are committed to recycling, while less than 45% of Georgia has curbside, 74% of GA counties offer some form of recycling, so from those numbers, it wouldn't seem all that outlandish that slightly less than half of the state could at some point during the year recycle. The question wasn't HOW committed they were to recycling, ie - do they recycle every week, it was only whether they have demonstrated some commitment to it, meaning that, yes, it is a little soft so far as numbers go, but it still illustrates the point it feebly supports.
Regardless of how many Georgians recycle every week, or ever, that number remains secondary to the entire point of the article, which was that if we were better recyclers, it would positively impact our state economy, as well the environment.
Desktop with 17’ CRT monitor run for 5 hours = 1 KWh
So even with the older monitor the computer would run for at least 8 hours with the energy savings from one aluminum can.
It is a disservice to readers and to positive environmental aims to simply quote recycling proponents without testing their claims.
The problems I found with your article are by no means isolated, I find exactly the same problems in almost all recycling articles.
As I said in my original post, I did like the economic slant. But can we believe the information presented supporting the economic impact claims since the other claims are incorrect or spurious?
The Savannah program, despite the sweet deal they got with Pratt, is never expected to pay for itself.
It was not designed that way and is funded through a combination of state grants, general fund tax dollars and direct fees to each household.
I readily acknowledge that the survey numbers are soft, and people would most likely be inclined to believe that they recycle "often", even if they don't, particularly if they were being surveyed in person, and even more so if they were being surveyed in person at an event like Earth Day. However, even if 45% is an inflated number, it's not being inflated to support the state's claims on recycling. If anything, the reality of the situation is even more dire than they admit. So, whether you think it's important as a economic force, or as an environmental need, than the fact remains that Georgians could/should step up their efforts.
The entirety of the state single-stream grant was spent on the pretty yellow-topped bins that now adorn our streets and alleys, as well as several of the fleet of recycling trucks. There was an extra few hundred thousand from the city spent on the rest of the fleet. If I understand correctly, and I don't claim to be an expert, because I really only started looking into this about 2 weeks ago, but most of the actual tax dollars being put into this are to cover gas for the trucks and the salaries of the people who drive them. If I'm wrong here, I'm sure you'll let me know. Some of that is underwritten by Pratt, who then pays for the tonnage. Now, if you're concerned with what the city is paying out of pocket, then shouldn't we all be advocating for the most participation possible from Savannahians, since that would then increase the amount of money Pratt pays to the city for our recyclables?
You as a journalist have a responsibility to publish only factual information. It should not matter if it is an underestimate or an overestimate it should be factual. That means is someone offers statistics you should check those statistics to make sure they are accurate and true.
As I said the program is funded through a combination of sources:
"The City’s initial capital cost for the collection program, estimated at
$3,333,000, will be funded by a state grant ($955,000) and the Vehicle
Replacement and Sanitation Funds ($2,378,000). The ongoing annual
operating cost, estimated at $1,250,375, will be recommended to be funded in
2009 by a $1 per month residential refuse fee increase ($576,000), Pratt
tonnage fee payments ($346,451), and a General Fund subsidy ($327,924)."
What you are suggesting is perfectly fine, IF the people affected, those who would receive and pay for the services, decide they want it and are willing to pay for it.
What you and your friends are suggesting is the same as having voters in the State of South Carolina decide that people in Georgia use too much water.
The voters in South Carolina could vote and decide that a higher water fee should be imposed only on Georgia homeowners. That is not how the system works for a very good reason.
It is taxation without representation.