Irate Homeowners Are Attacking Garbage Drivers Over Recycling

HOW LONG DO you think it takes you each week to sort the garbage, toseparate the trash from the recyclables? An hour? Half an hour? Let’s say fifteen minutes.

So what is the cost to the nation, the compulsory unpaid labor, the corvée as the French called it before the Revolution, of separating out the garbage?

There’s a danger, you see. There’s a danger that the cost of separating the trash from the recyclables might be more than the savings.

That is what is going on in Britain. Tim Worstall ran the numbers, and this what he found.

By 2020 it will cost about £3.2bn a year to dispose of solid waste. Er, but that doesn’t include the 15 minutes per household in waste sepration. If you figure paying people an minimum wage, that means an additional cost of £1.6 billion.

Is anyone really suggesting that recycling can recapture the £1.6 billion cost in unpaid corvée labor by the citizenry?

There’s another cost, of course. The garbage collectors are getting attacked by irate citizens.

Binmen say recycling schemes have led to a surge in attacks by householders who find their rubbish uncollected when they fail to follow strict rules.

(Here in left-coast Seattle we are getting ready to fine people for improper recycling practices.)

Unions for refuse collectors are threatening to strike over what they say is a rising tide of violence that has seen one in five of Britain's 40,000 binmen injured in physical attacks at work and more than two thirds verbally abused.

Did you read that? One in five have suffered physical attacks at work and two thirds verbally abused.

Is recycling worth the life of a single garbage truck driver?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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