Leonard Gray / L’Observateur / December 25, 1999

The Christmas rush is over, the cookies and punch and turkey and roast, pies and candy are all devoured. Gifts are given and received. The last ofthe holiday hugs and kisses are exchanged. For most, the holiday is over.Not quite.

There’s still the trash problem. All those paper plates and plastic forksand gift wrappings are stuffed in bulging trash cans, awaiting disposal. Towhere? Most don’t know and don’t care.

The problem of solid waste disposal, though, is a mounting one and will be of major concern very soon to practically everyone, as fees rise, landfills fill and parishes and municipalities run out of time.

And as these disposal fees rise, the problem presents itself as to fairness of these fees. A senior citizen living alone will most likely not produce asizeable fraction of that produced by a large family. Yet, the same fee ispaid and the same burden borne by each.

Questions have been raised on how to make the trash disposal fee more equitable for senior citizen, so I offer a humble suggestion.

Make the fee based on the weight of the trash collected. The technologyexists and, so I understand, is already being done in a few places. It workslike this – Assign each house, business and apartment complex a number. Eachnumber is programmed into a central computer.

As trucks collect from each trash can, the weight is computed by on- board scales and the results radioed back to the central computer.

Fee is based on weight collected. One other benefit of this idea is thatthe more you recycle, the less you will pay for trash collection.

Similarly, for recycling, a program could be instituted where a bonus is paid, according to the weight of the recycled materials. The more yourecycle, the more you earn.

Participation in the recycling program would increase and trash collection fees will be more fair. Likewise, it would help hold off the inevitable daywhen a place to dispose of trash is not available. This is alreadyapproaching crisis point, and solutions to this problem are not evident.

More and more, governmental entities are sharing landfill sites, but the finding and development of more sites gets harder and harder in the face of growing development and a strong environmentalist lobbies against new landfills. Yet, alternatives and solutions are still beyond reach, even fromthose who saw this coming years ago.

So enjoy your Christmas season, but please recycle and don’t be wasteful of our precious natural resources. We only have one planet, and it’s fillingup fast.

Leonard Gray is a staff reporter for L’Observateur

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