Parish recycles over 6500 pounds in a month

In just over one month in operation, Vermilion residents brought more than 6,500 pounds of recycling materials to the designated recycling centers around the parish.

“The recycling program is doing well,” Solid Waste Supervisor, Ricky LeBlanc stated.

“We brought our first load of recyclables to the recycling foundation in Lafayette and we brought 6,660 pounds from when we started just over a month ago.”

One comment was made by Public Road supervisor, Dudley Broussard that he sees that the program is going well.

“I know it is going well because on the weekends when the facility is closed they (the residents) are bringing their tires and other things to our gate over there,” he stated.

Although a round of laughter accompanied Broussard’s comment, it was still the consensus that it was better there than in the ditches, however the Vermilion Parish Police Jury would like to remind residents to dispose of the items in the appropriate containers at the posted times and locations.

In addition to recycling, the parish trash pick up drivers are experiencing some trouble with placement of trash cans at the road.

All residents are reminded to make sure the container is not on the road, the lid opening is facing toward the road and that they are put out by midnight the day of the scheduled pick up.

A brief history of rubbish

Rubbish is the unavoidable by-product of production and consumption. There are three ways to deal with rubbish, all known and used since antiquity: dumping, burning, and recycling.

For thousands of years it was commonplace to dump rubbish on site—on the floor, or out the window. Scavenging domestic animals, chiefly pigs and dogs, consumed the edible parts, and poor people salvaged what they could. The rest was covered and built upon. Over time, entire cities gradually were extended upward, rising on massive mounds called tells, which contained the remains of prior centuries.

Eventually, humans began to use more elaborate methods of dealing with their rubbish. In this country, Benjamin Franklin instituted the first municipal street cleaning service. This was also about the time that people started digging refuse pits instead of just throwing rubbish out the window (although the window continued to work for many people). Progress was slow.

In 1880 fewer than 25 percent of American cities had municipal trash collection. In 1895, New York City established the first truly comprehensive system of public-sector garbage management, and by 1910, some 80 percent of American cities had reg.

Recycling—commonly referred to as scavenging—was an essential part of the rubbish disposal process. Scavenging was such a familiar pastime that in 1859 Winslow Homer rendered Scene on the

Back Bay Lands, showing men, women, and children hard at work picking through the detritus of Boston’s city dump. Rag dealers were a regular element of both rural life and the street scene in America’s cities well into this century (Strasser 1999). By the 1920s, however, wood-processing technology and transportation systems had improved to the point that virgin wood had replaced rags and waste paper as the principal source of fiber for paper, and by the end of World War II, rag pickers were a rarity.

Another form of recycling seen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was reduction, a descendant of blubber rendering in whaling. It entailed stewing wet garbage and dead animals (such as the 15,000 horses that died each year in New York City) in large vats to produce grease and a dry substance called “tankage.” The reduction facilities produced staggeringly noxious odors, as well as a liquid runoff that polluted waterways. Political opposition built, and by the 1930s most were gone. The last to close was Philadelphia’s, in 1959 .

Although rubbish has been burned by humans for thousands of years, the first modern incinerator (called a “destructor”) went into operation in Nottingham, England, in 1874. Eleven years later the first American model (a “cremator”) was built on Governor’s

Island in New York City. By World War II some 700 incinerators were extant in the United States.

Although they emitted foul odors, noxious gases, and gritty smoke, they were effective enough to reduce disposal volume by 85–95 percent.

After the war, landfills of improved design began to replace incinerators, and by 1970 only about 150 trash incinerators were left in America. Higher oil prices during the 1970s renewed interest in incineration. Although some communities opposed incin erators, expressing concern about potential air pollution, by 2000 combustion (far more complete and thus cleaner than ever before) was used to dispose of almost 15 percent of all municipal solid waste.

The sanitary landfill had its origins in Great Britain in the 1920s, and was introduced in the U.S. a decade later by Jean Vincenz, commissioner of public works for Fresno, California.

There were two key elements that made these landfills “sanitary.”

First, all forms of waste were mixed together and disposed of simultaneously, to avoid large noxious pockets of decomposing organic materials. Second, layers of rubbish were interspersed with layers of ashes, street sweepings, or even dirt, to reduce vermin and noisome smells.

During World War II, the U.S. Army faced the problem of waste disposal on huge military bases and employed Vincenz to guide its efforts. By 1944, 111 posts were using landfills, and their apparent success had helped prompt almost 100 American cities to adopt the practice. Over the next 25 years, the sanitary landfill became America’s method of choice when dealing with municipal solid waste.

The modern era of waste disposal and recycling can be traced to the spring of 1987 when a garbage barge named Mobro 4000 spent two months and 6,000 miles touring the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico looking for a home for its load (Miller 2000, 1–14). Mobro set off in March 1987 with 3200 tons of New York trash, originally intended for a cheap landfill in Louisiana. Hoping to cut transportation costs, the entrepreneur behind the Mobro’s voyage attempted to interest Jones County, North Carolina, in accepting the trash.

But Mobro pulled into Morehead City, North Carolina, before the deal could be finalized, causing local officials to wonder: “What’s the rush?” They said “no thanks,” and word soon got around, leading to rejection slips everywhere Mobro went, including at the original site in Louisiana.

Although the physical availability of landfill space was not an issue, that was not how the situation played out in the press. The Mobro, said a reporter on a live TV feed from the barge itself, “really dramatizes the nationwide crisis we face with garbage disposal”. Indeed, a strange cast of characters managed to turn Mobro’s miseries into a national cause. The first actor was the Environmental Defense Fund, which had been trying (without much success) to sell household recycling to America. Mobro gave the organization what it needed. Said John Ruston, an official with EDF, “An advertising firm couldn’t have designed a better vehicle than a garbage barge”.

The second set of players were members of the National Solid Waste Management Association trade group, who were anxious to line up customers for their expanding landfill capacity during the 1980s.

After Mobro hit the headlines, the organization was widely quoted as saying that “landfill capacity in North America continues to decline”. Panicked state and local officials began signing long-term contracts for dump space. The final element in the mix was the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which also publicly backed the view that there was a crisis—basing its judgment on the fact that the number of landfills in the United States was declining. What the EPA failed to notice was that landfills were getting bigger much faster, and that total landfill capacity was actually rising.