States with bottle deposits - homeless employees of the state? (1 Viewer)

[dajmno]

Are the homeless people that go around collecting empty bottles off the streets; thus performing a function of state's street cleaning obligations; (reducing litter and encouraging recycling); employees of the state? With a wage of $.10/bottle?

So the deposit is the tax that covers the cost of disposing the bottle. So the people are paying the wages of the homeless.

I am a job creator.

 

[dajmno]

When the homeless go rummaging through a garbage can for bottles, those bottles no longer end up in a landfill, they are instead recycled - reducing our carbon foot print and contributing to the environmnent.

I think they deserve a raise in pay.

 

[billinms]

You have to consider the left over fast food they find. Are they taxed on that free lunch?

 

[PayOrPlay]

Ethical puzzle:

Say that your city has invested in a recycling program, with a separate bin for bottles, clean paper, and other materials that the city can collect and sell to a recycler or otherwise convert into revenue while reducing the load of garbage heading for its overtaxed dumps. Every week you put out your trash and your recyclables and the city trucks come by and pick them up.

And say that you have one or more guys (homeless or not) who come down the street every week, just before the trash trucks do, and rifle through the bins and take anything they can sell for cash.

In Los Angeles, the sanitation department used to run an ad campaign warning (in multiple languages) that this is a theft of city property, and they used to send cops and department personnel around to chase the bottle collectors away, but more recently they seem to have given up the fight, and a couple of rickety trucks come down my street to rummage through the trash, every week, late in the evening and again before dawn, on collection day.

What to make of this? Leviticus 19:9-10 sayeth: "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am YHVH your God." What say you?

 

[Twyst]

In Los Angeles, the sanitation department used to run an ad campaign warning (in multiple languages) that this is a theft of city property, and they used to send cops and department personnel around to chase the bottle collectors away, but more recently they seem to have given up the fight, and a couple of rickety trucks come down my street to rummage through the trash, every week, late in the evening and again before dawn, on collection day.

I thought trash became public domain once it hit the curb.

 

[daMixter]

How I luv the offseason.....

 

[dajmno]

If you live in a bottle deposit state - you don't have to feel bad about throwing a bottle out your car window. You're creating a job.

 

[Twyst]

If you live in a bottle deposit state - you don't have to feel bad about throwing a bottle out your car window. You're creating a job.

 

[geauxboy]

Our local outsourced recycling engineers are usually from Peru. What does that say about creating jobs for Mericans?

Sure, you get a finer sort to help curb unnecessary land fill items that could other wise be sent to the proper facility for a more efficiently run system, but outsourcing is where I draw the line.