It wasn't specified in the article, but I know that my trash service is actually part of my city water bill, and a lot of cities have the sewage and trash pickup under one bill. So unless he isn't flushing and burning his sewage, that might be part of the problem.

It sounds like they've outsourced the trash pick-up to a private company.

My trash service has its own department and is billed separately from everything else.

So get Allied Waste to pick up the recycling. He doesn't have to drive someplace to take care of the recycling and they don't have to complain about him breaking an ordinance.

Seriously though, I don't understand this. I would get an ordinance about not letting trash pile up around your residence but if he isn't generating any trash (he could write a book) who cares that he isn't giving Allied Waste his money?

I think this is an odd ordinance, but I'm also skeptical about this man's claims to having no trash. He should be able to negotiate for more infrequent pick-ups with the waste management company.

I have a feeling there's more to his burning 'yard clippings' than meets the eye. I know that it's possible to live a relatively green life. Hippies exist, I admit it. However, I have a hard time believing that he has ZERO waste. And since he says does not, I can only assume that he is burning it. And if he's not burning it, he's dumping it in someone else's bin, which is also a huge no-no.

I'm not saying he should have been fined, or even needs a once a week pickup. But what about semi-monthly? Or even the option to show receipts for trash drop-off at a drop-off site?

Bottom line, I don't believe his excuse.

I hope consumerist stays on top of this story - I can see the city & Allied Waste quickly changing their tune on this as it gains internet momentum to how stupid the town & Allied Waste is for requiring someone to produce trash.

Sort of like the guy who got sued because he wasn't paying fuel taxes. He was using vegetable oil (or something like that) instead of getting gas from a gas station. So the city didn't like that too much.

@Rectilinear Propagation: He doesn't generate zero garbage - he either grinds it up and burns it or flushes it down the disposer.

Sounds like he's not properly disposing of what little waste he generates.

well I know in our house with the recycling, Composting we have 3 adults adn 3 kids and only produce on green garbage bag of waste per month. it not that hard really it just so many have become use to disposable socity.

The only time we have larger amount of trash is when purchusing larger electronic items as the type of styrofoam is not picked up for reycling in out city.

Ah, the smell of trash burning- still found in some of the rural areas of TN at dusk...

In a way, I can kind of sympathize with the city - besides the fact that burning trash is bad in so many ways (pollution, fire risk, ect), requiring people to have trash pickup reduces the incentive for people to build up trash or to illegally dump.

Recycling is a crock. It takes more resources to recycle most things than to just produce a new product using raw materials. But regardless, this guy should be able to do what he wants as long as he's not affecting his neighbors.

It sounds like the ordinance was meant to prevent people from piling up garbage since most people produce more trash than this guy does (supposedly).

@Whitey Fisk: We know a couple people with no trash. They recycle EVERYTHING recyclable, compost all organics. They don't buy anything that isn't either recyclable or organic. For large items, they have garage sales, give to goodwill, reuse, sell on Craig's List, etc.

And on the rare occasions they do have something that HAS to be thrown out, they take it to work and toss it, or put it in a neighbor's can.

With a bit of thought and care, it's not really that difficult to create almost no trash. My family puts everything in the recycle bins that is permitted to be recycled. The few non-recyclables are crushed and then go into the trash can, which I take to the landfill about once every two months. We give any away used stuff that is in good condition by putting it on Craigslist.com or giving it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army.

Recycling is BS just throw all the garbage in one recepticle and let the garbage man hoist it in the truck. You have all have boought into the global warming lie. Next you'll all start believing in intelligent design.

i'd be willing to bet that he's burning trash. i'm not calling him a flat out liar, just that i'm a betting man and i'm placing my chips on trash burning.

@armour: I usually wind up saving it (Styrofoam) and giving it to the nearby Shipping Store (with the foam peanuts) to reuse. Call ahead, as not many places will take the block foam (only the peanuts).

california.....that should explain it..........

Seriously, how much trash do you people expect one person to produce in a week? I produce maybe, MAYBE one shopping bag full of trash a week, since I mostly eat out.

Good for Eddie House I am 58, live in Columbus Ohio and recycle 99% of our (2 person) waste, we recycle religiously, compost organic matter, and have one very small plastic grocery bag of non-recyclable, non-compostable, non-reusable waste a month, I put that tiny bag in the big 150gal trash can once a month for pickup. San Carlos must suck.

So what's worse, having a bonfire for your tree trimmings, or putting them on a truck that gets 5 miles a gallon, that goes to god knows where to essentially burn or bury them in landfill?

@cde: You'd be surprised at how wasteful a family of four can be. Some of my neighbors growing up used to take out at least two or three bags a day. Something tells me it had to do with tv dinners and other packaged crap they'd get from walmart every week.

San Luis Obispo, CA requires paid garbage service. I rented a house with three friends and we found ways of disposing our trash (friends' houses dumpsters) other than trash cans. Our landlord called us up and told us that the house owner had a lien placed upon the house because we had not paid the past year of garbage service (that we had not used).

We ended up having to pay for the past year of garbage even though we didn't use it at all. What a load of crap.

@headon:
Er.... WTF are you talking about??

Anyhow, yes it is possible to cut down to almost nothing, but no its not possible in todays society to have absolutely no waste. There are still somethings that need to be thrown away or that cant be recycled.

At my house we have changed our ways. Its a 3 adult house. We aren't around much but when we are, we do have things for the trash. But we started to recycle now anything that can be recycled. Most styrophome (spelling?) can be recycled now. So our blue recycle can is filled up each week. The trash is about every other week. There are still some things that cant be recycled, or are too dirty to be recycled. Like some take out food containers. I'm not going to sit there and wash it wasting water, I'll just toss it out. Or tissues. Recently I was sick and went through 3 boxes of tissues. the boxes were recycled, the tissues were trashed.

If you think about it though you can create an extremely small amount. If you go to eat fast food, eat it there. You save gas from not waiting in the drive-thru and all the trash stays with them. Buy things in bulk so you have less packaging, like meats that come in bags instead of styrophome. Recycle anything that has a recycle symbol on it. Compost old food. Did that once, the next season we grew tomatoes with it, they were 3x the size of what they normally grow at. Heck you can make some extra cash that way by selling the produce you grow at a farmers market. Use it to pay for your trash pickup.

@EBounding: @headon: All fun and games, until you get a fine for NOT recycling.

If they find more than 10% of your curbside trash contains recyclable materials, expect to pay.

That is, the city placed the lien upon the house.

I'd almost wager part of the problem the city has is the contract they have with Allied Waste. Where I live, I pay $27 every three months for trash pickup. People in neighboring towns (including the town where the trash service is based) pay $27 per month. The difference is that our town has a contract with the service saying that the municipality will use them exclusively and that 75% (or something like that) of the town's citizens will use it. The other towns do not have that agreement.

This town may have a similar agreement, and this guy rocking the boat opens up for more problems down the road.

Can someone be held to a contract that they officially have not signed themselves?

@EBounding: You need to read the National Geographic article from a month or two on this. Looks like you need to do some research.

As for this guy, he's not being sued for not having any trash, he's being sued for breaking town law. He needs to work to get the pointless law changed and THEN cancel the contract. If you live in a place, you have to obey its laws.

To comment on the issue of trash/recycling: Pretty much every town in Northeastern Wisconsin encourages recycling yet greatly discourages it by either providing or allowing only tiny recycling containers. My parents live in a new development where you are allowed a recyclables container measuring about 2x2.5x1...which is picked up every OTHER week. At the same time the trash can is the smallest "large" size available and is also only picked up every two weeks. The result is that many people have BOTH more recyclables AND trash than can fit in their cans.

I live in San Carlos. I haven't heard about this until this story on Consumerist. The city of San Carlos ("City of Good Living") contracts out the garbage service to Allied Waste of San Mateo County. Sounds to me like San Carlos is upset because they are losing their cut of the money Eddie House would be paying to Allied Waste if he utilized their services.

Remember the good old days when the scrap metal and paper facilities would actually pay you to bring in your cans and papers?

When I was a kid we saved aluminum cans and would take them to this recycling place that would pay us by the pound. Same with the paper -- they weighed the car before unloading the paper and then you unloaded the paper and then they weighed the car again and paid you for the weight of the papers... I delivered a weekly "PennySaver" type paper when I was a kid and I had so many extra papers it was great...

Nowadays, the county or city forces YOU to pay THEM or some other collection company to take your recyclables which THEY sell for scrap.

Regarding this fellow, I highly doubt he is 100% trash free. But recycling and composting is always a good thing.

________

When I lived in Michigan up until last year our city licensed multiple companies to come in and pick up trash and the homeowner paid them directly. I just happened to have had Allied Waste up there. Now that I am in Texas, my city contracts Allied Waste to pick up the trash in the whole town and we are billed on our water bills, like some of y'all mentioned above. And I pay so little down here to have my trash picked up as opposed to the direct bill arrangement we had in Michigan.

When you break laws, you have to expect the consequences.

Perhaps he will use this opportunity to get the law struck down via the courts.

A bit off topic maybe, but I thought that I'd get it off my chest..

It really, REALLY gets to me when people can't take 1 minute out of their overall time to establish a recycling routine. I'm not talking about composting all of your organic waste or reducing to 0% trash, I'm talking about recycling bottles, cans, papers, and generally known to be recycled items. So many people I've met who aren't from the Western states (CA, AZ, WA, OR) are incredibly uninspired to recycle for some unknown reason. I realize that many of the cities don't have a recycling program. When I lived in Chicago, one apt building I lived in was generally surprised when I inquired about recycling. I was surprised that they didn't have anything, and that everyone in this gigantic apt building was clearly throwing away their recyclable stuff. I looked online and the building was exempt because it was an older building, so I suggested that they put some large plastic bins in the basement and get the city to pick them up, because it was suggested that the city would be willing to do it. But, no, of course that couldn't happen.
When I lived in GA, there was no resemblance of the desire to recycle AT ALL. No houses had it, my ex had no clue what could be recycled and what couldn't (and still didn't after a year of trying to condition her into it) and neither did anyone else, and the amount of waste generated was ridiculous.
People should really take some time out to figure this stuff out. It's not hard to set up an extra bin for your recyclables. America's recycling rate is pathetically low when we should be the ones leading the charge.

@Buran:

Good article, saw that one myself and was ashamed at our piss poor performance, as I mentioned above.

while I give him kudos for recycling pretty much everything but he isnt recycling his yard clippings.

@SOCALROB: I guess the screen name indicates your from California. I guess that's why you didn't understand my post. Your prolly one of those hippies. Just to make it clear for you what I am talking about. Recycling is BS. Got it now!

I don't see how there can be a law requiring a person to utilize a certain private business, that's just insane. I can see the town negotiating for the services, but not requiring all the residents to. Maybe I should look into getting a law passed that requires every new house built to utilize our custom cabinetry. This sounds like some shady small town good-ol'-boy local government funny business going on, even if technically legal. I always find it funny that while everybody loves to pick on Bush for everything, people just accept it as part of life that you have to ask the local government for permission to do pretty much anything. Not to mention all the crap they can pull with (re)zoning, changing ordinances, imminent domain, etc... With the feds, just keep the IRS happy and your in pretty good shape.

I find it cheaper to just sneak in my trash into the neighbor's can.

@headon:

I'm not from California, and very far from being a hippie. I'm a Republican and I recycle fastidiously. Recycling lowers the costs of producing paper products, metals, glass, etc. Your town likely brings in revenue by selling recyclable waste.

In this case, the town has a law requiring all residents to contract for at least one garbage pickup per week. Let them sue this stupid old man who is burning his trash.

I live in Harrisburg, PA and we have the same thing. We are FORCED to use the trash service that the city contracts with and have no say in the contract. I admit I do generate trash but it should be my say who I pay to remove it or I should be able to drive it to a landfil on my own. This one of the things I hate the most is the fact Im REQUIRED to have trash service and I am FORCED to use the company that the city says I have to. I cant call another service and get a lower rate.

@Buran: I'll counter that by suggesting you watch Penn & Teller's BullShit episode on Recycling. Reusing items yourself is very good, but sending items far away to be hand-sorted and then sent somewhere else very far away is incredibly wasteful.

I'm not saying recycling is totally baseless, but it's far from the clear-cut issue it's often made to be.

Here's the thing. Sure there's a law requiring every home to have trash service... but breaking that law is between the homeowner and the city, not between the homeowner and the trash service.

This guy is generating trash...it may be a tiny amount, but you can guarantee he is, and is dumping it in a neighbors trash can...effectively making his neighbors pick up the tab for his trash.

Sorry Bub, but you're a part of society.

Sorry, Islandwiki, I'm with Gorky (and Ed). I don't have trash service, and fortunately my county doesn't have a problem with that. There's a facility not too far away where you can deposit recyclables, and once a year or so I haul the rest to the "waste transfer station" for a small fee. All perfectly legal and above-board, and heckuva lot cheaper than paying $20 a month for weekly pickup I don't need.

The sanitation laws assume some waste, therefore there must be waste pickup.

He can "claim" zero waste, but I, like others, suspect there is a lot of trash and waste products being burned OR the rooms of his house are holding the waste.

@Buran: WOW really useful comment... can you not hear my sarcasm? if town law says he has to be under contract with a trash company and he has no trash and does not need, he is being sued because he does not need trash service which is because he has no TRASH! "if you live in a place, you have to obey its laws" wow, what an idiotic comment.

A town having a law forcing you to pay a private company to provide a service hat not all may need is ridiculous, And the town going after someone for not using such a service is even crazier, HE COULD drive his "tiny" bit of waste to a dump who knows, your assuming he is burning it ? or throwing it in his neighbors trash? wow..

Renew your service and fill your garbage can with dirt each week.