Trouble from up north
Bensblurb 552 6/3/10
Trouble coming from Up North:
Up in Alexandria (Va), they’re installing residents’ recycling bins equipped with microchips to “...[A]llow the city to keep tabs on its bins and track resident participation in the city's recycling program,” reports the Washington Examiner.
It’s said the information will allow officials to target neighborhoods -- not individuals -- that lag in recycling. Oh yeah? Big Brother soon will be watching, even as you take out the trash.
The red light cameras were bad enough. Now, privacy will have been breeched even more, for the sake of environmentalists’ goals of loading green rules onto us all. Never mind that trash recycling already is running at 29 percent for the state. Virginia requires most localities to recycle 25 percent of their waste.
Why? Pressure. Otherwise, it’s goofy. Landfills have plenty capacity. More can be started. Rural America still accounts for some 95 percent of our land mass. Corporate giant Waste Management leads the way in building responsible dumps, a big one nearby in King George.
Potential dumps abound. If science can further de-stink them, leading candidates would include old gravel pits. There’s a huge one just off Garrisonville Road, as soon as Vulcan Materials gets done quarrying.
Meanwhile, I’m pestered to stop using those handy plastic bags for groceries. But they allow you to lug around a lot more stuff than the old paper bags, and they are good for many other things, too.
By now you can tell I’m no environmentalist. Nor a Neanderthal. Rather, a conservationist. Don’t laugh, it’s true.
While some neighbors use those awful, huge plastic bags to stuff their leaves into each fall and haul away, I crunch my leaves with a garden tractor and leave them be. They serve as natural fertilizer for the lawn and help prevent weeds among my azaleas. My yard’s leaf factories: over 40 mature trees, mostly beeches, maples, oaks and dogwoods--which incidentally combat global warming. (see the pic)
Neither do I mess with collecting grass clippings. Let ‘em fly and thus soon help feed my clipped lawn.
But do I also recycle the trash I put in the toter? No way. It’s my silent protest against total conformity--and a silent cry for freedom, liberty and all the good things we used to treasure before Washington took over.
True, it’s trendy to go with the green flow. Like, how terrible it is that Virginia has to import all that New York garbage that we howled about a decade or so ago. Never mind that it makes us money. Nevertheless, we really must recycle to be politically correct, you know.
Well, Winston Churchill once said something about such gospels: “No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.”
Speaking of intolerance, writer John Tierney stirred a hornet’s nest of environmentalist rage when he wrote “Recycling is Garbage” in the New York Times Magazine back in 1996. The skeptic charged that recycling “...squanders money and good will, and doesn’t do much for the environment either.”
I’d say Alexandria’s newfangled, tell-all trash barrels will have the same effect and only benefit its bureaucracy in issuing edicts.
Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at Benblanken@aol.com.
Trouble coming from Up North:
Up in Alexandria (Va), they’re installing residents’ recycling bins equipped with microchips to “...[A]llow the city to keep tabs on its bins and track resident participation in the city's recycling program,” reports the Washington Examiner.
It’s said the information will allow officials to target neighborhoods -- not individuals -- that lag in recycling. Oh yeah? Big Brother soon will be watching, even as you take out the trash.
The red light cameras were bad enough. Now, privacy will have been breeched even more, for the sake of environmentalists’ goals of loading green rules onto us all. Never mind that trash recycling already is running at 29 percent for the state. Virginia requires most localities to recycle 25 percent of their waste.
Why? Pressure. Otherwise, it’s goofy. Landfills have plenty capacity. More can be started. Rural America still accounts for some 95 percent of our land mass. Corporate giant Waste Management leads the way in building responsible dumps, a big one nearby in King George.
Potential dumps abound. If science can further de-stink them, leading candidates would include old gravel pits. There’s a huge one just off Garrisonville Road, as soon as Vulcan Materials gets done quarrying.
Meanwhile, I’m pestered to stop using those handy plastic bags for groceries. But they allow you to lug around a lot more stuff than the old paper bags, and they are good for many other things, too.
By now you can tell I’m no environmentalist. Nor a Neanderthal. Rather, a conservationist. Don’t laugh, it’s true.
While some neighbors use those awful, huge plastic bags to stuff their leaves into each fall and haul away, I crunch my leaves with a garden tractor and leave them be. They serve as natural fertilizer for the lawn and help prevent weeds among my azaleas. My yard’s leaf factories: over 40 mature trees, mostly beeches, maples, oaks and dogwoods--which incidentally combat global warming. (see the pic)
Neither do I mess with collecting grass clippings. Let ‘em fly and thus soon help feed my clipped lawn.
But do I also recycle the trash I put in the toter? No way. It’s my silent protest against total conformity--and a silent cry for freedom, liberty and all the good things we used to treasure before Washington took over.
True, it’s trendy to go with the green flow. Like, how terrible it is that Virginia has to import all that New York garbage that we howled about a decade or so ago. Never mind that it makes us money. Nevertheless, we really must recycle to be politically correct, you know.
Well, Winston Churchill once said something about such gospels: “No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.”
Speaking of intolerance, writer John Tierney stirred a hornet’s nest of environmentalist rage when he wrote “Recycling is Garbage” in the New York Times Magazine back in 1996. The skeptic charged that recycling “...squanders money and good will, and doesn’t do much for the environment either.”
I’d say Alexandria’s newfangled, tell-all trash barrels will have the same effect and only benefit its bureaucracy in issuing edicts.
Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at Benblanken@aol.com.
posted by Ben Blankenship at
7:05 PM
