February 04, 2008
Monday PM

We're always complaining about the trash being dumped all over the place. But only one has giving a solution to stopping it by placing dumpsters around. Sure you can put up cameras but people will just dump in other places. I will tell you exactly what the problem is and how we could have fixed it. problem: The city owns and operates the garbage dump. Do you think they care if people dump trash in the Borough? If they did then the dump would be open later in the day and on Sundays.

Believe me I wanted to dump my trash right on the scales a few times I worked all day and ran home to load my trash in my truck just to get there five minutes late, after doing it a couple of days in a row you get mad. I however did not dump my trash, but did back at my home so I could use my truck for work. This is one of the problems consolidation would have helped eliminate.

I like to think don't complain unless you have a solution or at least an idea of how to better it. All over the rest of the United States the land fills are open on Sundays.

If there was some one who had listened to one of my letters a year or so ago, I said we should turn the old pulp mill site into a recycle plant. We still can. Every one could sort their trash an dump for free at any time. #1. We could dump brush and wood debris in one pile that would in turn be ground up in o chips, or shredded. lessening the cost of home tear-downs, remodeling and neighborhoods burning.#2 Plastics could be separated and then melted into other things or used as composites -- just big blocks even and sold to other plants.#3 Metals could be loaded onto barges and shipped for scrap metals.#4 Glass crushed for sand and concrete mixes -- or just melted down and sold that way.#5 Paper back into pulp.#6 Food waste could be mixed with the wood chips and burned for fuel to create power and heat for melting and so on. Excess power could be sold back to the utility company as the mill did. We could have taken in all of Southeast Alaska's trash and made a few bucks at that. Other's trash, someone else's cash.

Sure there's not much glory in trash but when we see it all going by on the barges and we're paying to truck it to eastern Washington, why not get into it before some one else? People are just throwing the stuff away, and paying to do so. Then if people got caught littering they would have to put in time picking through the food garbage for punishment and I bet they only do that a few times.

But seriously the dump needs to be open on Sundays and then on week days till 6 so people have the time to get there.We don't all get to take time out to go to the dumps when were trying to get the cash to buy more garbage. That's my opinion on the trash problem.

Robert McRoberts
Ketchikan, AK

Received February 04, 2008 - Published February 04, 2008

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