Kansas has lagged miserably with respect to recycling, but the local city/county has at last come up with a "program."

Under this program, residents may request a separate "recyclables" cart. You receive "credits" for the amount (by weight) of recyclables picked up in the recyclables barrel.

Advertisements that are much too frequent on local TV proclaim that you can get all your trash service for $8 per month by recycling. They NEVER STATE what it costs if you don't recycle.

The County Transfer Station has come up with what they call "single stream recycling" in which you don't sort the recyclables. They dump it all on a conveyer and transfer station workers sort it there.

HOW IT ACTUALLY WORKS

You pay $40 per month for trash pickup.

Advertisers pay the "trash guys" to distribute advertising coupons for them.

It's unconfirmed, but indications are that the haulers do get a kickback from the transfer station based on any "cost recovery" from the recyclables - undoubtedly in cash, or as a discount on dumping fees.

The "credits" you get are all in coupon books for "discounts" at "current fad" restaurants much too expensive for me to be interested in, "travel discounts" for those who wish to take annual trips to Slobbovistan, discounts for "tanning salons," non-licensed "orthopedic shoe sales outlets," grocers trying to unload "near out of date" stock, free mailing for black-market drug distributors, or other worthless (to anyone I can think of) "deals" - all of which cost additional amounts to be used in the RARE CASE that something might appear to be of interest.

By subtracting the total face value of the worthless "coupons," they come up with "only $8 per month," but you stiil pay them $40 up front, the advertisers pay them to send you MORE TRASH, they probably get a kickback on anything actually recycled, and everything in the "rebates" requires you to spend more(*) for any possible redemption.

* In all specific cases I've seen the "additional cost to redeem" exceeded the actual value of the "free deal" if you went on your own, without "discounts," to a reputable source and just paid cash for an equivalent delivered product/service.

My own little village participates in the single-stream recycling deal at the transfer stations; but you pay a flat fee for trash service that appears on the same bill as water and sewer service. You can get a "recyclables" cart if you want, and recycling might eventually affect what everybody pays for the trash service; but you don't have to deal with the worthless coupons.

We're one of the three (that I've seen) people among the nearest two dozen or so who have a recyclables cart, and we will continue to use it "just on principle" and because it allows us a little more "cart capacity" when unusual loads appear. The recycling program here is only a few months old, so maybe others will pick up on the idea when the see more carts out.

One glaring deficiency in the local program is that no recycler in the area accepts "shredded paper" as recyclable. There is one mill that advertises acceptance; but it's almost 40 miles from home and I'd have to take it myself - and they don't say it's free. The big local University has an on-campus shredded paper collection system with that mill, and it would be a little closer to take it for merging with theirs; but as yet I haven't found the "person to ask" to find out whether they'd be willing to have my participation.

For most, shredded paper isn't much of a problem; but I'm converting old records to digital so I've had one to three "moderately compressed" 40 gallon bags of it per month for the last several months, and it's all pretty clean and obviously something that should be recycled. Nobody here wants it, though.

John