The New Garbage Cans Are Here....

The City of San Antonio Curbside Recycling Program is on its way to the Great Northwest and tonight, members of the Environmental Services Department presented an informative hour of details and guidelines to a standing room only audience of residents at the Lodge of the Great Northwest.In case you don't know, the program to replace your regular garbage cans and green square recycling bins with two huge roll around containers has been a great success in the areas that it has been implemented in so far. The idea is that the city can reduce the number of personnel and vehicles required to do both garbage and recycle collection, and save money in costs due to injury claims. You see, with this system, the garbage collector can sit in the comfort of the air conditioned truck, lift the can briskly using a mechanical arm, then move along to the next home. No Ben Gay needed for aching backs, no catching of a cold in the winter or heat stroke in the summer. I'm starting to think this might be a gig for me! The staff outlined the 5 step implementation process. Steps 1 and 2 were notifying residents about tonight's meeting and holding the meeting. Step 3 will be to leave hangers on the door to let us know when the containers will be delivered. Step 4 is the actual delivery of the containers and step 5 is the first pick-up a week later.For the most part, people seemed eager to get started with the program. Many people had questions about the logistics of things for example, what do people do with their large accumulation of leaves. One resident was concerned that he has so many leaves that he won't be able to have them picked up. He suggested that the GNW area should get a special program to accommodate the fact that we have so many trees in our neighborhood. The staff has heard this same concern many times over and had statistics ready to back up their defense. Make no mistake, the city is asking for people to make recycling a part of their lives. One of the big containers we will receive is a blue one. This container is as big as the one for trash, a brown one, but is intended for recycled stuff. Your beer cans, your newspaper, your junk mail, your beer cans, your cardboard, your cereal boxes and beer cans, and plastic bags and such. By recycling more things, you'll have plenty of room for the rest of your normal trash in the other container.

So what about the leaves. Well, twice a year, the staff tells us that you can have leave bags picked up - up to 50 bags at a time. This is in addition to the regular brush pick up. But forget that. I have close to 25 trees between my front and back yards. I rarely put out a plastic bag full of leaves. Get with the program and put a mulching blade on your mower and mow right over the leaves. It will help your yard and save your back. Don't worry, your yard won't look like the big mulch pile in Helotes.

Need more info? Call the City at 207-7830 or check out the website.