Roll Out the Barrel - Curbside Recycling (Finally) Comes to Fayetteville

Fayetteville, NC is a little Podunk southeastern city. Sure, it's one of the top 10 largest cities in the state, but let's be honest, if not for Fort Bragg Army Reserve and Pope Air Force Base and the population of soldiers and airmen that add to the city's population, I'm not even sure there would be a city. That being said, Fayetteville is still large enough that you'd think we'd already have curbside recycling, but we don't. I actually have heard that it's been tried before, a few years ago (must've been while I was in Georgia attending college, because I sure don't remember it). Evidently, a few months into the experiment, the company that was being contracted by the city to do the pick up went belly-up.

So, now we have these blue roll-out containers that look like our green trash cans, but are smaller. The first question I had was, “Why aren't they bigger?” Aside from that, I was also wondering why we received ours on May 1, when the brochure that was attached to it said that pick up wasn't going to begin until “the week of June 7.” The week of June 7? A whole freakin' month later? WTF? Oh, and I'd like to point out that June 7 is a Saturday folks. Doesn't a week traditionally begin on Monday when referring to the “week of [insert date]?” Top that off with the fact that I've never seen a city trash collector truck ever roll down the street on a Saturday and you've got a prime example of how screwed up this burg is.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm quite glad that the Fayetteville City Council voted to finally do curbside recycling. I'm just waiting to see how long it takes before they give up on it. You see, I've already noted that a few of our neighbors have already begun rolling theirs out to the curb with their trash cans each week since we got them going on five weeks ago, even though the recycling pick ups wont begin until next week. Does that mean they're using them for regular trash? Or are they putting the correct things in them, but didn't bother to notice that June 7 is the beginning date? Either way, it's probably indicative of why the program will fail here; Fayettevillians are just to stupid to have a curbside recycling program. They'll put regular trash in the things or be to lazy to rinse out the milk jugs like they're asked to. The City Council will, of course, contract the whole thing out to the lowest bidder and it'll end up being a company that's on the verge of bankruptcy and will fail to do a good job because they don't have the money to hire a large enough crew. I'm just watching and waiting to see what happens, but I can't say I'm overly optimistic about the program sticking around for long. I hope I'm wrong.

~ JC

Next week: “Sign Me Up and call me 'Sucker'!” (How Credit Cards, Reward Programs, and Bonus Points are BULLSHIT!)