City Issues A Greasy Pizza Box Warning

Since New Haven is known for its pizza why not have a place where people can put them for use in Community Garden COMPOST piles? These cardboard boxes make great vermiculture beds.

Yay! I love New Haven's single stream recycling!

I try to recycle as much as I can -- and I'm happy to get a reminder of what's supposed to go in the blue bin and what isn't. Thank you!

Are the folks doing the checking going to distinguish between greasy pizza boxes and non-greasy pizza boxes? I generally tear the clean lids off of mine and throw them in the recycling while tossing the greasy bottoms in the trash. But if the city gets penalized for any sort of pizza boxes, then I'll throw both halves in the trash from now on.

Can someone from the City (or NHI) please clarify?

When is trash day? When is recycling day? They only pick up "trash" once a week.

Here's what's going to happen. If the city decides not to pick up someone's recyclables because a pizza box or plastic bag slips in, folks are simply going to dump their blue bins contents into the brown bins and go about their business. Worse yet, they may do what my neighbor did several months ago when they did not pick up his recyles, they will simply dump the garbage somewhere else, like in the woods across the street from my home. And what will happen then. Someone like me will get tired of seeing the garbage, take their plastic bin with a rake and pick up the garbage. Then I will wait for public works for 2 weeks, to the point of threatening to put the garbage back where I got it from, before the city finally comes to pick up the waste. But first, according to new policy set by the city, I have to call the police department to file a report and get a case number before public works will take my report. You would think that the police would be able to take a report over the phone and generate a case number immediately. But no, in the ultimate display of waste and idiocy, they will dispatch a police officer to my home to take the report, who of course will not arrive until 5 hours later, after 11PM. Three days later someone from public works will come to pick up the garbage. True story, our taxpayer dollars at work.

During the winter, I burn my apizza boxes. Flame on!

(No, I do not wet the bed, nor am I cruel to animals.)

This article is basically preaching to the choir...

In my neighborhood I'd say that at least 10% of my neighbors still dont understand recycling and another 30% just choose to pile bags of garbage up on the street next to their brown bin all because they are somehow above recycling.

Darnell- I know people who have had their cars stolen in NH and did not once see a police officer come to their home. Similarly I know people who have had 1000s of dollars of electronics taken out of their car, fingerprints and all, and they did not see a cop either, all the reports were over the phone.

I don't understand the logic behind the new policy. Essentially, if you want a pile of illegally dumped garbage removed by the city, you have to call he police, wait for them o come to your home to take your report and give you a case number, and hen call public works with the case number o actually file a report to have the debris removed. Of course, the police are busy with more pressing issues, and may take, as in my case, 5 hours or more to show up at your door. This occurred after 11 pm, if it were earlier in the day, I would have never seen the police and would not have had the stuff removed. I don't know, perhaps the new procedures are in place to discourage folks from calling in reports, who has the time to wait for a police officer to show up at their door. I do know that it is a HUGE waste of very limited resources, and I think the police officer was probably as frustrated as I was that he had to deal with this nonsense. He actually would have to write an incident report. Worse yet, now my address becomes part of some sort of police database. If I call a few more times this year for the same issue, does my address now become a nuisance? The whole thing just seems so ridiculous. I'm sure the city has some well thought out, fact filled detailed reason why police officers have to chase down illegally dumped garbage reporters like me, I'd sure like to know what it is.

What about plastic bags with the recycling sign on them? I have plastic bags with the #2 HDPE recyclable sign on them. Should I not recycle those?

There's probably residual contamination in the majority of those blue toters as their former use was as a stankass garbage can.

First, let me say I love the single-stream recycling and my blue bin almost always is full. So, let me get this straight. I am supposed to put my non-greasy pizza box (from Edge of the Woods, no grease) into the trash to take up a significant percentage of the volume in the small brown container instead of with the rest of the cardboard and paper. And if I don't, my recyclables will be picked up on trash day (same day as recyclables in my neighborhood) and the whole bin worth of recyclables will be treated as garbage and dumped into the garbage truck loose and not in plastic bags. This makes sense??

"When people put non-recyclables in the blue bin, the city has to pay the recycling facility to dispose of the entire load as trash, according to Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts." This is very very hard to believe. I mean someone at the facility has to be separating the plastics from the papers from the medals from the glass, and also weed out the little bit of trash that mixes in. Seems to me that the City is getting ripped off by the recycling facility if the city has to pay to have the entire load disposed of as trash. The City needs a new agreement - or a new recycler.

@ Jimster: plastic bags can't go in single-stream recycling because they jam the machine that sorts the recyclables, which then results in a charge to the city. (This was explained at a Hill South Team Management meeting last year.)

"Mayor John DeStefano posed a challenge to the city to boost the recycling rate to 50 percent. That would save $365,000 a year, he estimated."

The city will never get to 50% recycling without people and businesses being forced to by law and fines. A large percentage (70%) of this city just doesn't care and is not going to be bothered.

There is a pizza box solution out there, c'mon geniuses......
A Grease Trapping disposable insert???

I throw away greasy pizza boxes but recycle the uncontaminated parts (the tops, and sometimes the box when my pizza has a circular insert to catch grease). I will be furious if my recycling gets rejected simply because there is a pizza box in my blue bin. I appreciate the need for the rules clarification, but enforcement better not just be based on a quick glance at the box and an assumption that it is contaminated. A good rule poorly enforced at the expense of the taxpayer and responsible citizen is not a good rule at all. City: I'll fulfill my end of the bargain, will you fulfill yours?

If the wrong materials are put in the recycling bins, City Hall says we have to pay the recycling facility to dump the load.

Isn't the recycling facility us? The New Haven Solid Waste and Recycling Authority? Wasn't this the new authority DeStefano/Smuts sold off some years ago for a multi-million dollar payday to bridge a budget deficit? If we have to pay them, deduct it from all the money the Authority owes us for payroll and benefits. The last I check on this a couple of years ago, they owed city taxpayers a lot of money and were operating at a deficit. Has this changed?