Bob

"A Florida county has grand plans to ditch its dump, generate electricity and help build roads -- all by vaporizing garbage at temperatures hotter than parts of the sun.

The $425 million facility expected to be built in St. Lucie County will use lightning-like plasma arcs to turn trash into gas and rock-like material. It will be the first such plant in the nation operating on such a massive scale and the largest in the world.

Supporters say the process is cleaner than traditional trash incineration, though skeptics question whether the technology can meet the lofty expectations...."

http://www.wired.com/news/wireservic...l?tw=rss.index

Kind of cool, if somewhat an old idea.

So what do you lot do for rubbish collection? around here, it's a 2 week rotation where they pick up rubbish one week and recycle stuff the next....out where we use to live in maine, the landlord had a big dumpster that was emptied every couple weeks...and previously, we had to go to the town tip to empty our rubbish.

oh, and the weird thing, very few people around here use bins, they just leave the rubbish bags out by the kerb for collection day, it's kind of gross really.

jen_andreson

Interesting! Not sure if it will work, but it's better than sending things on a barge to India (as BBC reported happens with much of the UK rubbish).

We have weekly recycling and weekly rubbish collection--one is Thurs and one on Friday. We have green wheelie bins that are provided by the city--thankfully, as they are animal proof. In our previous suburb we didn't have bins so people used their own bins or put out bin bags, and the coons and cats were always getting into them.

Our recycling is very efficient--no sorting required which makes it easy. Our London borough still doesn't have recycling collection, so I was thrilled to find it here.

Bob

The recycling here doesnt' have to be sorted either, but where we use to live with the tip, we had to separate everything.

As for the vaporising, it's a sound method and would be good money sense, reason it ain't been done int he UK is because of some EU legislation about burning rubbish preventing it.

Jerseygirl

NYC abandoned recycling a while ago because it was not cost effective.

Our garbage is collected weekly, recycling every fortnight.

Are you in the city Bob? Normally its in the city streets where you see sacks of garbage dumped for collection. Very unsanitary as it attracts vermin and bugs. As for your garbage only being collected every fortnight...that's disgusting...especially in the hot summer months it must reek.

Bob

we're in a city...and rubbish has to be kept in ya house or in bins, but most people then dump the bins out by side of street rather than leaving bins out, because the rubbish has to be in blue town bags as it works on a pay as you use type thing...and rubbish collection does seem random, some people seem to get rubbish collected each week with the recycled stuff, some people only have recycled crap....I haven't really figured it out, but it's all a bit minging really.

britvic

Ours is collected once a week, no recycling and it's funny I miss doing it like I did back home, when I was there last trip my friend had 3 wheelie bins, recycling seems now a way of life back home.

Jerseygirl

When we first moved here I thought it would be a pain in the arse...but we do it automatically now.

Angry White Pyjamas

Well since St Lucie is already built

A) On a massive landfill and
B) Next to the biggest Nuclear Reactor in the USA

I cant see them having much to lose.

We looked at buying a house there and decided not to when we found out that the county has the highest incidence of childhood luekemias and brain cancers in the country (I think it was) and the reasons why.

Ray

Our is collected twice a week.....wed and sat ... recycling ..no odea...

dbj1000

Ours is collected once per week. Two weelie bins - one for normal trash, and one (that has an internal divider to make it two, really) for recylable paper on one side, metal & plastic on the other.

They'll also collect any garden refuse (tree branches, grass cuttings etc.) on trash collection day, and turn it into compost that you can buy back from the city for $5 a bag.

...but as we discovered last week, they won't collect a garden refuse bag (huge paper bag) full of crappy local clay soil. For that you have to call the "bulky waste disposal" hotline, and they'll come and collect it for free.

Oh, and every 3 months they do a "hazardous waste pickup" where they'll take your paint/weedkiller/rat poison etc., again for free.

Sounds to me like we have a pretty all-inclusive deal here compared to many parts of the country.

TouristTrap

Twice a week here too. Recycling once a week. Garden trash on Tuesdays. Once a year you put whatever you don't want out and they'll take it. Paint, etc, once a year or so they announce it and you have to take it to designated spots to get picked up.