The bulk waste pick up restoration is great news. Many people in the town take advantage of it to clear out things we can’t put out in our weekly garbage pick up. Plus all the metal items put out get picked up by the scavengers and re-used or recycled, a great way to reduce our waste stream. Hooray for reusing and recycling.
You want the State to find ways to save money but you are encouraging our local school districts to spend more by banning foam school trays? You guys have no consistency.
We are giving volunteer dog catchers guns and badges? They don't need no stinking badges. God help us, what next, volunteers to direct traffic and write tickets at intersections?
You guys just don’t get it. It is not what we are throwing away, it has more to do with how much we use to make it and where it goes after we are done with it. All those options to Styrofoam use more energy to produce, cost more to transport, because they are heavier, and will still end up in the garbage. Plus they can not do the things foam can and will cost my business twice as much or more. You will have solved nothing by banning Styrofoam. It will all end up in a landfill or in an incinerator. The biodegradable packages do not biodegrade in a landfill, nothing does. Actually they only biodegrade under very specific conditions in very expensive specialized physical plants. You should have checked that out before you even considered your misguided editorial. I drive the Northway every day and I see coffee cups of all types, McDonald’s cups and bags every day in the median and on the roadside. Some of these have been there all winter. We need to expand recycling and make it mandatory. Corn based containers like the ones you recommend can not insulate like foam and most can not hold hot foods or liquids, did you check that out? They also use tons of chemical fertilizers, to produce, that leach into water ways and add to alga blooms, check out the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Corn is one of the most destructive crops for the soil to grow. We need to look at the entire production life and waste stream of our products before we make a scapegoat of one or more. You will speed global warming and kill the planet with your “earth friendly ideas”. This ban is not a progressive step by any means and will most likely cause more harm then good.
Wow that is cool. I have read the story a number of times. I love Schenectady history and have read Tales of Old Dorp since I was at Linton in the early 80’s. I remember Marv when he covered city council meetings and I read his column every week, granted he writes the way Adam Sandler sounded as the “ grumpy old man” in skits on Saturday Night Live - you know too many street lights out, kinda like an editorial about sidewalks. It is great to see the connection to a great story of Schenectady’s past to a person currently alive in the area and writing. Thanks for sharing.
Spitzer was an arrogant fool who thought he could get away with anything he wanted too. Bruno should not get a free ride here; he did use state aircraft to attend party functions and justified it with brief photo op visits. Continue to go after Spitzer but show some journalistic responsibility here and stop letting Bruno skate free.
Barbara Blanchard is not looking at the whole picture. We send our garbage to landfills and incinerators nothing biodegrades in a landfill, even the companies that make this stuff admit that, and incinerators burn every thing up. Foam accounts for less then 1% of all garbage so what is she saving? It will all go into the waste stream, if she wants to be “earth friendly” she should start a recycling program, like Las Angeles has, for foam. She is sticking it to the independent businessman who is trying to make a living by forcing us to buy more expensive packaging that won’t do what she thinks it does, another politician wasting time and money. If she wants to save the earth tell her to drive slower.
Posted on April 4 at 9:23 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The bulk waste pick up restoration is great news. Many people in the town take advantage of it to clear out things we can’t put out in our weekly garbage pick up. Plus all the metal items put out get picked up by the scavengers and re-used or recycled, a great way to reduce our waste stream. Hooray for reusing and recycling.
On Officials restore funding for leaf pickup