Monday, July 21, 2008

Poaching / UK blog

Today I have two links to share.

One is a story I heard on NPR about poaching. Apparently one US city has made it illegal to take items from other people's recycyling containers. They claim they've lost too much money in recyclables to "poachers" (also called "recycling bandits"). I find this a bit odd. I've always thought that what one put out on the curb wasn't theirs anymore, or at least that's what all of those crime shows taught me, so it makes more sense to me that this wouldn't be an issue. The more recycling the merrier, right? What if these "poachers" end up recycling items that wouldn't be normally recycled? On the other hand when Meg and I lived in a more urban area "poachers" would often look through our trash making a mess of things and a lot of noise late at night.

The second link is to a UK blog I found called Copper Counter. It mainly concerns what someone has found near Coin Star machines in UK. Some great coins have been found. I always wondered what someone from the UK would find.

Found: 3 pennies (1 at Sovereign Bank, 1 at Home Depot, 1 at Costco), 1 dime (at Sovereign Bank)

3 comments:

Syruss said...

You might be interested in another recent article on the subject of recycling “poachers” from San Francisco. Fortunately I live far enough away from any of the large cities for this not to be an issue for me.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/01/MNVI11GE90.DTL

Man said...

It is illegal almost everywhere to take stuff form the curb or trash.

In NYC it is completely illegal but of course it's done everyday. A recent news story on TV showed that the city lost over $20 million last year from poachers since all NYC trash gets recycled.

It was a great story it showed clearly how these poachers were both a danger, made the environment worse, and are thieves. Last thing I need to see is my old and personal stuff in a collage in the MOMA.

kestrelia said...

Man, good points. I guess the question would be how do we encourage people to pick up cans, bottles, etc. without poaching? In that those who pick up recyclables on the side of the road (not in bins) are doing a service to us all since no one else is going to pick up such material. Our 5 cents for some cans/bottles in MA helps. Why limit the law to only soda/beer containers? Why not raise it to 10 cents? 5 cents in 1981 (when MA's law was passed) was worth 12 cents in 2007.