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Recycling Survey

A neighbor alerted me to a recycling survey, from the city’s Dept. of Sanitation, on the department’s website (halfway down the page).

www.cityofno.com/Portals/Sanitation/portal.aspx

It has to be printed and mailed, so I wouldn’t call it an online survey. (A print version, for mailing in, was “prominently” placed in yesterday’s Times-Picayune, on the next-to-last page of the Picayune section.) I printed a copy and started filling it out, but this question stopped me in my tracks:

If the City offered curbside recycling, would you be willing to pay a portion of the cost? If so, how much?

The multiple choice answers range from “Nothing” to “Over $10 per month” with some increments in between.

The reason this give me pause is that we are currently paying a private company $15 per month to pick up our recycling. But how much would we be willing to pay for a City service? I don’t trust this administration, especially when it comes to waste disposal.

Regardless of the trust issue, I feel like municipal recycling should be funded by all taxpayers and available to all residents at no extra charge. Make it easy as possible to participate; that’s the way to get the broadest participation. So I’m checking “Nothing.”

Published inNew OrleansPolitix

5 Comments

  1. dsb dsb

    This is no way to conduct a survey, is it? What kind of data are they going to get out of such an obscure, hardly random undertaking? It’s a set-up, just like the MONTHLY recycling days. The Sanitation Dept. has made it downright difficult to recycle so that when people don’t recycle, they can say, “See, there’s no interest. The community doesn’t care about recycling.” Maybe we should all start depositing our recyclables at City Hall. Let them survey that.

  2. Because we live in a condo building that has over 4 units, the city doesn’t take our trash and recycling. We have to pay a private company to come and pick up our trash. The recycling situation here in Chicago is murky. We use the blue bag system. So if that bag can actually make it to the disposal site without being ripped apart, then it gets sent to be recycled. Several aldermen have pushed Major Daley to switch to separate recycling like how all of the burbs are around here. I think we’re close to adopting that.

  3. Civitch Civitch

    This is so clearly an attempt by Veronica White and the Sanitation Department to justify NOT engaging in recycling. They have more than enough anecdotal evidence to know that there is widespread support. And if they REALLY wanted to gauge public opinion, they’d a) publicize the survey and b) format it for online use, rather than this ridiculous, 1980s print-and-mail plan. Then again, they are decades behind the times in most every aspect, so why should we be surprised?

  4. […] Editor B wrote about the inept way the city sanitation department is conducting its recycling survey. One of B’s commenters points out that the whole thing is very 1980s. This morning I got this e-mail from a friend: The City is taking a survey to determine interest in recycling – noticed in the paper on the second-to-last page of the New Orleans ‘Picayune’ section. Unless it is better publicized, I’m afraid there will be a low response which the sanitation department will interpret as a lack of interest by the citizens, as opposed to a lack of promotion by the City. So, let’s try to give them a good response. Here is the link to download the survey: […]

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