NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:Separating the good trash from the bad

Change is in the wind.

They’re coming. We don’t know exactly when, but sometime before October, they will be here. Some of you already have them. Soon it will be our turn.

Like everyone else in town, we’ll be getting three big new trashcans in the near future. Rainbow Disposal has already started delivering them to some neighborhoods.

Over the next five months, they will replace the old system with the new system everywhere in town. We’re already starting to prepare our minds for the change.

Many people are resistant to change, and we’re no different. We get set in our ways, we have a system that works for us, and we don’t want to change it. But our old system of trash collection is outmoded. It isn’t suitable for a modern society that must reduce the stream of trash that goes into a landfill.

The state requires that 50% of trash be recycled, and in the future it may be 75%.

As conservationists, we embrace this change with open arms. But as crotchety old people set in our ways, we’ll mutter under our breaths about it at the same time.

Our current containers are small, easy-to-handle, 33-gallon trashcans. We normally put out about one-and-a-half cans of trash a week.

The new trashcans are huge. The 95-gallon size is three times as big as our old containers. And instead of just one or two trashcans, there will be three of them. This is a change that will take some getting used to.

We understand the need for three containers. One will be for recyclable materials, one will be for green waste and one will be for real trash. By pre-sorting our own trash, we will make it easier for more material to be recycled.

With the current system, recyclables are often contaminated with liquids, garbage, dirty diapers, pet waste, you name it. The new system will result in less material going to landfills and more material being recycled. We’re all in favor of that.

We’re familiar with the need to separate trash in the home because we’ve recycled our own aluminum and plastic bottles for years. Sometimes we turn our recyclables in for redemption ourselves, and sometimes we take them to the Bolsa Chica Conservancy, where the Orange County Conservation Corps takes in recyclable aluminum and plastic. The revenue is what allows the crew of Corps kids to work at the Bolsa Chica at no cost to environmental groups, so we encourage you all to donate your cans and plastic beverage containers to the conservancy.

We’re also familiar with the three-bin system because it’s the one in use at our son’s house in San Diego. We can tell you from experience that the new containers that we’ll be getting are enormous. However, they have wheels and are easy to maneuver. Still, we don’t generate all that much trash. There are only two of us at home, we’re not into conspicuous consumption, we recycle our cans and bottles ourselves, and we compost most of our yard green waste and kitchen garbage. We just don’t generate enough trash to warrant such huge containers. We’re going to request the smaller, easier to handle and store 65-gallon carts instead.

Even though we already separate our aluminum cans and plastic beverage bottles, the new system will allow us to recycle even more material. In the future, we’ll put the endless piles of junk mail and discarded hard copies of our writing drafts into the recycle bin along with newspapers, cereal boxes, flattened cardboard, glass jars, wine bottles and a host of other materials that currently just go into our trash compactor. The blue recyclable containers will come with a “cheat sheet” on the inside of the lid to help us learn what things go into that can and which into the brown bin that will hold the real trash.

To make it easier for us to learn the new system, we visited the Rainbow Disposal website at www.rainbowdisposal.com. We plan to tape the list of what goes into the green and brown carts into their lids. It isn’t always obvious whether or not something is trash or recyclable. For example, although palm fronds are green waste, they can’t be composted readily so they go into the brown waste bin. And although margarine tubs are plastic and paper milk cartons are cardboard, they don’t get recycled either. They also go into the brown trash bin.

For people who have additional needs, Rainbow is expanding its free extra pickups to four times a year. These pickups can be used for such things as tree trimmings cut into four-foot lengths, bagged trash or old furniture and appliances.

The new fleet of trash trucks run on natural gas, not diesel, and are thus far less polluting. We’re in favor of anything that results in less diesel fumes in the air, because burning diesel fuel pours carcinogenic particles into the air and hence into our lungs. There are better ways to purify the air than breathing it in and having our lungs remove particles.

We are really excited that Huntington Beach is finally moving into the modern era of trash collection and recycling. The many benefits far outweigh the slight nuisance of adapting to change.