Its not about the landfills, its about the money. Funny the story doesn't tell you what these counties make each year from selling this scrap. For example, Gwinnett County's recycler pays them 83 cents a pound for cans. Gwinnett also sells newspaper and plastic bottles they collect.
Gwinnett also charges their residents $30.00 a month for garbage pickup. For them to threaten fines, its insanity. This is just a tool to screw with people.
Gwinnett County residents could face $500 fine for not recycling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, December 04, 2008
While neighboring counties encourage recycling, Gwinnett County’s new solid waste management ordinance puts teeth into it.
The ordinance provides for a civil fine of $500 for violations, which includes those who fail to “source separate residential recovered materials.”
Mandatory recycling is not common in metro Atlanta, but Gwinnett County Commission Chairman Charles Bannister said the move is in line with a state policy that local governments develop plans to reduce solid waste by 25 percent.
“We want to save landfills as long as we can,” Bannister said. “Nobody wants to open up a new landfill.”
The state has tied solid waste reduction to applications for new landfills.
“We don’t intend for this to be the garbage gestapo, running around, looking in people’s garbage about what’s there and what’s not there,” said Connie Wiggins, executive director of Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful, which is administering Gwinnett’s waste disposal program. “I believe the fine applies to all categories, and certainly, if we saw excessive abuses of materials being thrown in the garbage.”
The big concern, Wiggins said, is mixing garbage in the recycling container.
“[It}causes contamination,” she said, “and … it ends up going to a landfill anyway.”
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/g..._fine.html
