Haven't spilled the beans yet, but T and I have vastly different opinions on the issue he raised on his blog yesterday - see here to read more.
Here is the scenario. Once a year our local council has a 'hard garbage collection'. This is basically where you can leave junk too big for the garbage bin on your nature strip and the council truck turns up (eventually) to pick it up and take it to the tip for you. Good for people like us who don't have access to a trailer, nor a tip.
Now, having just had the front yard cleared and cleaned up, we hired some big skips and dumped all the garbage we could find. So we had nothing on our nature strip on Sunday night.
But the neighbours did. And people drive by, see something they think might be good or useful, pick it up and off they go. Now, just so you know, this is illegal. You aren't allowed to take the stuff from the nature strip - once it's put out there, it becomes the Council's property, so by taking it, you are taking Council property (stealing).
The discussion then leads to: The person who takes the stuff - is he merely breaking the law, or is he recycling useful things? What do you think? I'd be interested to hear!
6 comments:
I see no harm in it. It is very recent that councils have a problem with scavengers going around. In the past they were happy for the load to be reduced.
I get annoyed by the scavengers. It isn't illegal here, but I think it should be. These people are taking revenue from the city. Although, in order to get something large picked up by this city, like a fridge, you have to call and make special arrangements and hope they show up. So we are often relieved when the scavenger shows up to clsim it. Because you will get a ticket for leaving your trssh out on the curb after trash day!
I'm happy for the scavengers to help themselves, as Andrew said it's only recently they made it illegal to pick over the piles.
One year I had 2 council blokes - big, burly boofheads - complain that old galvanised iron downpipes were "too heavy" to pick up, despite the fact I'd chopped them down into 30cm bits.
I embarrassed them somewhat by picking the pipes up and tossing them into the truck for them, then offered to follow them around to do the heavy work for them, bloody tools.
Well, just to have it on record, I like people taking the 'junk' and turning it into useful items, as opposed to it going into landfill. I think it's a really good thing to do. I'm a member of 3 local freecycle groups and offer things out regularly.
T says that bloke will make a profit on it. I figure he'll have to spend something to tidy the items up and if he's got the money, time and nouse to do that to keep landfill from overflowing, then that is surely a good thing.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
AND! On top of that, Coucil still hasn't yet picked up the junk. The neighbourhood looks like a tip!
I didn't know that it was against the law and like you I like it. I am a member of freecycle group too and think that the less that goes to landfill the better.
Never any problem with it. As far as I'm concerned, I pay my rates and am always dissatisfied with the service I get from my council. Stuff I put out onto the verge is no longer wanted by me however as far as I am concerned, it belongs to me until someone else picks it up. Whether that's council or recyclers, I don't care. As it is, this ceases to be a problem from this year as our local council has decided that they're no longer doing the half-yearly junk/rubbish collections anymore. No, instead we get a whole two extra vouchers for level-packed trailers for the tip. Sucks if you're getting rid of half a kitchen worth of stuff including the old fridge. Sucks even more if you've got no way of getting that junk to the tip in the first place. Didn't stop council from putting the rates up another couple hundred though.
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