Taking out the trash

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Or, in this case, Clark County taxpayers.

Back in April 2005, Southern Nevada’s top garbage man, Republic Services Area President Bob Coyle, came up with a proposal to boost Southern Nevada’s abysmal rate of curbside domestic recycling, then reported at about 5 percent.

Under this plan, the monopoly garbage hauler would increase pickups of recyclables from twice a month to weekly.

Of course, to avoid increasing its costs, the firm would then have to cut back its routine garbage pickups from twice a week to once a week.

Faced with the prospect of decaying garbage perfuming their garages for a full week in hot weather — two weeks should they miss a pickup — area residents rallied at the appropriate public forums and shouted this idea down.

A year passed. A Southern Nevada Recycling Advisory Committee was formed. And guess what they discover? Southern Nevadans’ rate of participation in curbside recycling is “abysmal” — not merely short of some arbitrary “target” 25 participation rate, but actually down around 5 percent.

The committee asks the Clark County Commission to approve a pilot program under which recyclable materials would be picked up once per week, instead of once every other week. To make things easier for everyone, the recyclables would all be thrown in one big trash can, instead of being separated into bins of different colors. Glass would no longer be accepted.

Of course, to avoid increasing costs to the monopoly trash hauler, regular trash pickups would be reduced to one per week, instead of two.

Sound familiar? The public showed up to shout it down again.

Another year passes. It’s now the quiet dog days of August 2007. And, looking both ways to make sure the coast is clear, here comes the Southern Nevada Recycling Advisory Committee once more, this week moaning that curbside recycling has sunk to an “abysmal” 2 percent participation rate, leading committee members to ask the County Commission to authorize three pilot programs. Selected neighborhoods will see: a) garbage collection twice a week and recycling collection every other week. A second group of homeowners will see: b) garbage collection twice a week with weekly recycling pickups. And the third group will see … wait a minute, we know it’s here somewhere … ah: c) once-a-week recycling pickups with garbage collection also reduced to once per week.

Mr. Coyle managed to conceal his surprise at this proposal, quickly extemporizing that his firm is “committed to the county to do whatever is necessary to help them with the pilot programs.”

Let’s put on that big hat Johnny Carson used to wear when he played Karnak the Magnificent, press the sealed envelope to our foreheads, and predict: like Doug and Dinsdale Piranha finally getting it straight, the objective judges over at Republic Services will find option “c” to be “just right.”

County Commissioners Rory Reid and Chip Maxfield Tuesday fought back an attempt to remove option “c” from the experiment, leading a solid 4-2 County Commission majority in OK’ing this scheme.

County Commissioners Chris Giunchigliani and Tom Collins voted no.

As we pointed out the last time this particular perfumed pig came around on the merry-go-round, much recycling, as currently practiced, verges on feel-good self-deception. Many materials that consumers believe are “recycled” actually cost more to “recycle” than to simply dump.

In fact, why would picking up recyclables every week instead of twice a week encourage more people to recycle? It won’t. Option “c” — the walnut shell with the pea under it — would simply pick up the same amount of stuff over a two-week period, but at twice the cost.

And how would it “increase recycling” to stop recycling glass altogether?

Under cover of all this talk about recyclables, this is really a proposal to cut the frequency of total Republic Services collections, from about 11 per month to about 8 per month — with half the runs (as opposed to the current 18 percent) requiring fewer men in smaller trucks, since hardly anyone recycles.

This “is not a reduction in service,” argued Mr. Coyle during the 2006 go-around. “We’re not going to take half the trash. We’re going to take it all.”

Hey, good one. Would you pay your barber the same amount per year to cut your hair just once, each September? He’d still “cut it all.”

Back in 1999, Republic exerted considerable lobbying muscle to win an unprecedented 21-year monopoly contract with the city of Las Vegas. It also enjoys a monopoly contract with Clark County. Valley residents were told that these were great deals because Republic’s service is so good and its rates are so low.

As we point out every year at about this time, if Republic wants to change the rules on frequency of pickup, the existing contract should be voided, and competing firms should be invited to submit bids.

If, on the other hand, the municipalities are still bound by the long-term contract, then Republic should be considered bound as well — to keep picking up our garbage twice a week.