May 19, 1999

An Open Letter about cardboard

Mr. Louis Picardo
Coastside Scavenger
2305 Palmetto Ave. Pacifica, CA 94044

Dear Mr. Picardo:
At the risk of raising my blood pressure and blowing a gasket or two, I must respond to your latest flyer on recycling. You demand I buy and use my own twine or expensive fiber tape, and use more of my valuable time dealing with trash than I already do, to tie up bundles of the cardboard I donate to your profit-oriented company, or Coastside Scavenger will not pick up what I leave out for you on trash day. If I refuse to flatten and tie it in bundles, you say you won't recycle the cardboard I leave for you.

I think you're a fine fellow. I have nothing against you. You contribute to local charities. You participate in local service organizations. You shop locally. However, it's not my intention nor is it my goal in life to use my supplies and especially my labor as part of a community effort to make you rich. If a cardboard box stuffed with cardboard is not sufficiently secure to meet your requirements, I will mix it with garbage or burn it in the fireplace, rather than recycle it. If you want me to use twine for your benefit, you should furnish the twine. I refuse to spend my money on twine to increase your profits. Also, my time is worth at least $21 an hour, yet you make no offer to pay me for the time required to tie and bundle the cardboard which you sell at a profit. If it takes me five minutes a week, or 20 minutes a month, to flatten and bundle cardboard and gather my recyclables for your benefit, that means I'm donating at least $84 worth of my labor to you each year. If you were a charitable organization, or if I had stock in Coastside Scavenger, I might feel good about that, but you're an entrepreneur whose goal is to make a profit. Nothing wrong with profit! That's what business is all about. But you're not going to increase your profits from my free labor if I can help it!

Grocery stores find waste cardboard a major profit center. I assume you do as well, yet you refuse to pick up my cardboard if it's not tied up like a Thanksgiving turkey.

There's another alternative. Since you have a virtual monopoly on picking up trash in Pacifica, offer any diligent man or woman with a truck who's willing to do the work the right to pick up loose cardboard from your customers. They do all the work. They make all the profit. You don't have to bother. I suggest you allow them to pick up aluminum cans as well. That will remove a "burden" from your back, and it will give someone else a good income. Another alternative might be to throw open Pacifica's garbage contract for competitive offers. Very likely there's someone else willing and able to clean up Pacifica, do it better, and charge less money than you do.

Another scavenger organization might even restore the monthly safety valve you used to offer, where trash was brought to a couple of places in town by local residents on a Saturday. Hundreds of cars lined up every month, proof this was a needed and wanted service, yet Coastside Scavenger arbitrarily stopped doing it, and with no advance notice.

Paul Azevedo, The Reactor, has been sharing his opinions with fellow Pacificans since 1975.