help with cancelling trash service please
 

we tried out the burn barrel we made today. needs a little work. but, we'll get there.

now I'm looking for some help with a list of what is recyclable. planning to go to the recycling center tomorrow to see what we can recycle. guessing they'll say soda cans, maybe paper. don't know what else.

we'd really like to get down to not needing weekly or any trash service. maybe just the occasional run to the dump. what do you all recycle or do for trash who don't use weekly trash service?

I'm wondering what plastic items can be recycled if they take recycling. I'm wondering about grocery store canned goods.

I also think there are a few scrap yards not too far away. but, I really haven't a clue how sorting or selling them scrap metals works.

any help sorting out how all this sorting would work is appreciated. thanks all.

We burn paper & cardboard. The rest goes to the dumpster where dh works. We were paying $17 per month for pick-up & they raised it to $20. Dh asked his boss if we could throw it in the dumpster & he said it was fine. We usually have 2 bags per week.

Check with local recycling. Our closest town with curbside takes different things than the town where we have to take our recycling. They take aluminum cans, tin cans, glass jars (no plate glass), all plastic except # 6 and #7, all paper, cardboard, books, catalogs, magazines. A couple of times a year they have an electronic dump day. Then you can bring any small electric appliances, electronics, batteries, etc. They also have a household cleaner/pesticide/herbicide/paint, etc day. I try to keep those times in mind. The thing I wish they would add to the list is Styrofoam. We don't have much but I hate putting it in the regular trash.

At the scrap yard, aluminum cans should sell for about 50 cents a pound, generally speaking. Other areas pay more than our local yard does. Prices can vary greatly from one area to another.

Steel cans around here pay 5 cents to 9 cents a pound, depending on the steel market. Again, other areas pay more. They will also buy anything else made of steel, so if you need to get rid of an old push mower, they might be a decent source to dispose of it.

One thing that I've seen posted on this forum is that after some people buy something at the store, they open the package and ask the cashier to dispose of the packaging, or drop it in the trash can on the way out the door.

:smack how do I tell what type of plastic is recyclable or not?

are my canned goods from the store (tuna, corn, etc) recyclable? I read you guys say tin cans and steel cans. which is which?

swallowing my pride here and laying my ignorance out of all to see.

our old trash service $$ started creeping up a few years ago and they began limiting how much you could put out. then, we moved here and the service is a whopping $40 a month. needless to say, the whole needing to deal with getting rid of trash service if at all possible has been bumped up on the list of stuff to do.

around here we have burn bans on and they dont want you to burn trash, and I found a law that stated you have to have trash pick up, mine went up to 20 a week from 17 as well. not sure what people do when they cant afford trash pickup. I guess we get fined

............Did you drill several holes around the perimeter of the barrel along the bottom so the fire can pull breathe ? , fordy:coffee:

I can't stand when people burn trash other than maybe paper/cardboard. It stinks. Pool up with a neighbor or a few for a dumpster pick-up weekly or whatever.

yes, but, I think we need more holes

*********
No shame in not knowing; you asked and
now you know more than you did before.

well, thanks for taking the time to read the thread, but, i'm not sure your comment is very helpful for the info I was asking for. since i'm not your neighbor, what I do won't bother you.

thanks copperkid3!

Dad burned everything as I was growing up. Mousse and hairspray bottles go off like rockets lol.
I haul my scrap to the window at the omnisource. I tell em what i've got, they either weigh my car before and after dumping it or point me to the proper area to weigh whatever I have. They give me a numbered magnet to stick on my door. When I'm all done, I go in the office and give the people my magnet. And I show my ID and give a thumbprint signature. I get my money and go.
We only have metal recycling in my county.

My neighbor takes plastic bottles to a recycling place. She says it pays well. I'm not sure all recycle places take plastic. I know she had to look around to find the place she goes too.

Good luck. I would love to find someone to split my trash can and bill with.

Check with your local fire department, here there is a burning ban and burn barrel have been illegal for 30+years? Fines start at $1000.00+ the cost of the fire dept doing and putting out the fire, even if it is out!

Your recycling center will tell you exactly what's recyclable, they usually have flyers with different pictures of the types of plastic to help out.

Every town's recycling center takes different stuff. I've lived places where everything was recyclable to here, where they only take certain types of cardboard and only plastic with the neck smaller than the bottle (??)

Do check on burn barrels, they are illegal many places. Here they are banned all fire season but legal in the winter.

Yes cans from veggies are all recyclable.

Here in my part of KY the county has big dumpsters parked in lots here and there for recyclables. They list on a sign what is and what is not recyclable. A lot is able to be recycled. I take all plastic bottles that have that triangle made of arrows mark on the bottom, all cans (veggie, tuna etc), all glass jars and bottles, detergent jugs, cardboard, newspaper, magazines and catalogs. We are VERY lucky to have this program!

I burn my trash in a barrel once a week or so. There is very little to burn since I feed scraps to the chickens and dogs, compost some and recycle. Mostly I'll have some feed sacks, some paper and junk mail. It has worked out very well over the years. Trash pick up here is about $20 a month. But the service is very hit and miss. Sometimes they break down or forget to come...then your trash is sitting out all day and some neighbors dogs tear into it! I like the fact that I can burn it when I want, and its done. I burned a barrel of trash this morning before going to work as a matter of fact!

Agreed. I personally don't like when people do ALOT of things....but its not any of my bees wax : )

At our local garbage dump they take tin and aluminum, glass except for blue colors, plastic that is marked 1 or 2 in the triangle on the bottom, newspaper, mixed paper (any paper that isn't newspaper like the boxes that crackers come in) and cardboard - cardboard is described as two pieces of paper with the wavy stuff in between).

My dad had a burn barrel that he used for most mixed paper and cardboard. His dump trash amounted to about 2 plastic grocery sacks every two weeks. We have quite a bit more. When we cancelled our garbage pick-up a year and a half ago it was quite an adjustment as far as just throwing the bags into the trash can and rolling it to the road once a week. Now we sort all recyclables and hit the dump about twice a week - luckily it's only about a mile away.

I'm KY too. new to this county. lots of people here burn, and the trash service is who you want, nothing required. plus side is yeah, I can do what I want. downside is we already filled a couple dumpsters with junk we had to dig out from old dump piles on our place. seriously, there was a burn pile out back that had chairs, coffee mugs and BIG heavy car parts in it. wonder if we've got dumpsters around somewhere that I haven't seen yet? I'm wondering if I need to have the stuff all in separate bags or if I can throw them into cans to haul in the truck and dump out into something when I get there?

I'm with ya.

The largest emissions of dioxin is now unregulated burning of trash. Dioxins can have a foot print well beyond what you consider neighbors.

...............One option you might consider , see if there is a small business fairly close by with a dumpster , offer them maybe $30 a month or so if they'll allow you to place two or 3 large sacks of trash into their dumpster each week . You won't even have to Recycle ! , fordy:coffee:

I get what you're saying with "foot prints". having the trucks drive out here every week creates a footprint too. so, does the office and bank processing of my bill to be a customer.

our overall consumption of just about everything is ridiculously low compared to how much it used to be. and, when I look up "typical" usage for my family on things like trash, water, sewer, electric, propane, gasoline, shopping for food, clothes, lots of other stuff, we're way below the statistics I see as typical. for example, I've read typical American water usage is 80-100 gallons a day. my entire household, 7 people should then be using up to 21,000 gallons a month. we average 2500 gallons. that's just under 12 gallons a day per person. and, that includes all our outside usage for our animals and land upkeep as well. electrical usage for us used to easily hit 2400-2800 kwh a month. now we average between 600-1000 a month, for 7 people. also, only one of us works full-time away from home, so everyone else is here running power 24/7/365. we're not as good at keeping our footprint as small as some other people, we are better than others. I don't actually know how much I believe the accuracy of statistics I find with google for typical usage. so, really I try and only really put weight into where I know we have been for usage/footprint and where we've gotten ourselves too.

so, I sleep well at night knowing we're doing what we can as far as footprints go. I think it would be great if everyone did as much as they could. but, I can't force my will on others for the same reason I don't want them forcing their will upon me. also, when all is said and done, it seems to me that governments and corporations are the biggest impacting entities for problems with footprints.

:soap: alright I'm hopping down now. :)

Penny wise and Pound foolish.

Dioxins are some of the most toxic chemicals known to science.

I would clean that up first, so as not to subject myself or my neighbors to it. And most importantly I do not want my family subjected to it, in particular the young ones.

Plastic bottles have a triangle with a number inside on the bottom. Check with your local recycler to see which they take.

The PTB don't usually enforce the law out in the country unless someone complains. I burn cardboard once in a while. Scraps go out for the chickens. The nearby town has dumpsters for cans.

The county has a transfer station. They send all of our landfill type stuff to ND for burial. I bring them the nonrecycleable stuff about twice a year. They charge about $3 for a 55 gallon plastic bag full. Some things, like florescent light bulbs and appliances are an extra charge. They also take more recyclables like used oil.

No garbage pick up or charge.

Plastic pop bottles are normally recyclable, and are usually marked with a continuous arrow on them as described below in the link:

http://eartheasy.com/blog/2012/05/pl...y-the-numbers/


http://eartheasy.com/blog/wp-content...le-logos-1.gif

Go to the link above and read what the numbers mean as we are not allowed to copy other people's work and post here (copyright infringement). The numbers above are universally used and the meanings are contained in the link.

great question. We are thinking of doing the burn barrel thing also. Sick of the garbage company charging extra here and there for this and that. Even if I put out a sign saying do not take all the garbage if your going to charge me extra, they said they will still take it and charge me.

As for the people complaining about people burning. I'm sure we will be glad for you to send us a check for our monthly garbage bill (ours it 25 a month) to our address.:hobbyhors

Just read this this morning about trash pickup in Cairo (long read, but containing good background knowledge that one never gets in media gloss): http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...13/tales-trash

http://i2.wp.com/www.brobible.com/wp...size=485%2C301

Having lived in a couple of different places that have recycling what they take varied enormously. The only thing to do would be to call them or see if you can find a website for them and get a list.

I take a bag of my non-burnable trash with me each time I go for gas. I just deposit it in the trash barrel by the pumps.

well stopped by the recycling center in the town next to us today when I ran to Walmart and got some bins for trash sorting. looks pretty user friendly. you just pull in and unload your stuff into the correct bins. they look like they take a wide variety of stuff, including car tires and oils.

they don't charge anything. they don't pay anything either. but, some folks that work there said there are a couple of places that might still pay for cans locally. we'll check that out when we can.

burn barrel still needs some tweeking, so we'll play with that this weekend i'm sure.

gonna set the bins out near the back porch and start working on our trash sorting skills to see how much will really be left after I separate what's recyclable and what's burnable.

I found some info online about a couple of other places that recycle stuff once a month that might be closer, so we'll see how that works later. exciting, exciting. thanks all for the tips. i'll be so excited if we can get to point where the trash service goes bye, bye!:nanner:

We also had to get rid of trash service. We do burn wood in an outdoor boiler in the winter so that works for us.....I will explain.

All our junk mail, scrap paper, and clean cardboard (small food boxes, etc) get broken down and placed flat in a brown paper grocery sack. When full we place it in an outdoor shed. When cold weather comes we put the whole bag in the furnace (think bale of paper/cardboard) and burn it.

Bigger cardboard boxes are broken down so they will lie flat and once cold weather comes they are also burned in the woodstove.

Any glass containers or plastic containers that I can possibly re-use are washed and kept. I am a canner so not a lot of glass from the grocery store.

Any glass that I am not able to reuse gets put in a plastic grocery store bag. When the bag is full I tie it up. It can then be tossed in any public garbage container, or if I am visiting anyone who does have garbage service (I have a few friends and we trade favors back and forth) I simply toss it (with permission) into their garbage can. Its not dirty and doesn't stink because its been washed. And most folks I know (us included when we had garbage service) never filled their cans up even halfway.

Any metal gets washed and tossed into another bin. My husband occasionally hauls in scrap metal and when he does the bin gets dumped into his trailer. You can separate out your aluminum and steel by using a magnet....steel will stick to a magnet and aluminum wont. But if you found someone who hauls in scrap I bet they would let you drop your cans off at their place for free.

For us in the winter everything else gets burned in the outdoor boiler, we live out in the country so its not an issue. We burn trash maybe once every 3 days or so.

in the summer my husband rigged up a blower and a pipe for the burning barrel, it works like an incinerator. Throw a lid on the barrel and its not considered open burning. When the ashes are completely cool we put them in a feed sack, and staple it shut when its full, then toss the sack into a friends garbage can (with permission)

I was going to suggest that you ask around to your friends and inquire if they fill up there trash bin consistently every week? If you find someone who doesn't ....maybe ask if they would let you throw a bag or two in every now and again......maybe a couple bucks for each bag or a flat amount every month? Doesn't hurt to ask around

yeah cause we dont pay for trash service at the station, they pick it up for free... oh and our favorite is when people drop a bag of all of their dog doo doo in the can, because dog leavings our somehow our responsiblilty ... and this is why when we wanted to get a recycling dumpster at work we have to keep it locked because when folks dump their trash in the wrong dumpster guess who gets to climb in to pull it out.

:umno:

mrs gc pete

Around here, at one garbage company charges different rates - you pick whether you can put out 1 bag, 2 bags, etc / week. My sister got the unlimited bags per week, so we take our garbage into her.

However, we do recycle - all metal, tin, aluminum, and steel goes to the scrap yard that pays US to drop it off! We burn paper and cardboard (we live out in the country) so what is left is garbage - and we average one garbage bag a week - that gets dropped off at my sisters.

As for dumpsters - you either need to have an agreement or have permission to use a dumpster. Every year in the paper, people are caught for dumping their garbage in company dumpsters, store dumpsters, or school dumpsters. The police write them up for theft of service.

If you want to get rid of your garbage a little bit every day, I suppose you could take it with you and when you get gas throw away your garbage, or when you go to the store, throw it in their garbage can, or when you go to the convenience store, throw it in their garbage can, or when you go to work, throw it away. But the previous is a bit on the unethical side.

here if the trash people think you are adding your trash to a neighbors they go through the bags and find something with your name and address on it and fine you and restart your bill.

and to drive to a recycle center cost money in gas, so you really have to be a person that plans. Our wants all the cans and bottles washed.

that's so weird/creepy. I would have thought there were issues with sanitation and privacy that would keep trash people from sifting through (other than processing for recycling or incineration or something).

How trashy of them..:bash: sorry couldn't resist:happy2::happy2:

My knee jerk reaction is to offer you a one way ticket to the third world. That may in fact stand, but I consider that detrimental to you and I.

I also considered the moneys that I spent on text books for environmental science in your education grades 4-12. Obviously that was a waist.

Here, in this forum, with the supposed "link to the land", I am perplexed at the disregard for the environment.

Burn the trash over your compost bin?

One other thought about your aluminum and steel cans:

If you use mousse, hairspray, etc., many of those cans are now made out of aluminum, and not steel.

Some of the cat food cans are aluminum too.

Of course, you can always read the label on the can, or use a magnet to check. After a while, you'll get pretty good at identifying aluminum. At 50 cents a pound for aluminum, versus 5 or 6 cents a pound for steel, it is worth the effort to sort those aluminum cans from the steel!

ok, just to be clear, I didn't actually start this thread to become a nasty mudslinging, "I'm gonna judge ye" type of conversation.

if y'all want to debate the finer points of how big everyone's "foot print" is, start your own thread and please feel free to enlighten us all on how your households existence is completely without flaw.

sheesh people, zip your pants and remember people in glass houses....

to everyone reading this thread, I hope you got something out of it that was actually helpful whether it made you think my thread was a good topic or whether you don't agree.