City Sues Man for Cancelling Trash Service

City Sues Man for Cancelling Trash Service

www.celsias.com

Yesterday the Examiner ran a story on Eddie House, a guy that, through concern over the environment, managed to reduce his household waste to next to nothing through recycling, giving scraps to his dog, etc. Where it gets screwy is that the local refuse collection service has now sued Mr. House for no longer requiring their services.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Lol. Wow, being FORCED to produce trash. THAT'S a new one.

How pathetic, this man is doing something 'Green', and the city fights him for it.

Over money.

www.celsias.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Brilliant

Just the sort of thing you'd expect from this looney society we've built.

I bet the major complaint is loss of earnings.

Well done to the 'go-green' guy.

Bah humbug to the refuse company. You just can't win. What they gonna do? Sue him every day until he produces rubbish?

I do hope the guy wins the case and more people follow suit. Not just for the environment but to stop these silly 'jobsworths' deas about revenge...

I know what I'd do if I were him

I go take a big dump in the trash can
and leave it by the curb for'em

Yep, this is yet another thing that very clearly demonstrates our brilliant society.

I can picture the city's attorneys getting up there and saying "What's next, EVERYBODY stops making trash for us! We'll go broke!"

Outrageous!

I've heard some stupid things today, but this so far takes the cake. What is the basis for this lawsuit anyways, I mean can they sue for not requiring service? If it were me, I'd show up in court just to laugh at the reps of the company and tell the judge to stop wasting my time. I'd probably lose, but to me it'd be worth it.

and do you know why their so concerned about obtaining your trash??.....

....because they sell it for a tidy profit to china!!!

thats right there making money off that which your throwing away,and the way it is processed in china is extremely harmful to the envirnoment!!!,so in essence there not really disposing of it,just relocating it to where it harms other people!(factor in the energy spent transporting it to china aswell)

once again even the most basic of services has been reduced to a money making scheme,the greed of this world is beyond all comprehension.

i can live on £5000 a year max(alot less if i could afford solar panels and my own garden for food and such),theres nothing i really wish to buy,i spent hours today round town looking for something to purchase cos i had a bit of cash and couldnt think of or find anything!,so in the end bought the biggest sandwich i could and i enjoyed it very much!

[edit on 31-1-2008 by welivefortheson]

[edit on 31-1-2008 by welivefortheson]

reply to post by welivefortheson


Yes, you're right.

Everything is about money. Everything.

And if you're in the position, you'll FORCE people to pay, no matter what the cost.

This example is a joke. Are we going to have minimum limits on how much trash we have now? Another step towards freedom.

If we lived in his city, we'd follow his methods of doing whatever he does, and see if the city sues all of us?

Shouldn't we if we did, heh?

here i9s how it probaly went down a city council man met with a rep for the trash service look you need to get an ordinance to make people use us as only trash service or we can't line your pockets. next thing you know everybody in town has to get weekly service thru this one service
failure to comply with ordinacre and the city sues. that happened in my area but they wanted us to put our crap in clear orange trash bags at 3 dollars a pop. i said screw that instead i burn it in a pit in back yard once a year i load what doesnt burn and take it to county land fill not city dump
ad paY ABOUT 25 DOLLARS

Check out the 10 everyday items you can recycle

www.gogreencharleston.org...

What law is this based on? Is there a law in place that requires you to make trash and have some specific service gather it? I'm hoping to see this one go to court and the trash company laughed out from the room.

Originally posted by PsykoOps
What law is this based on? Is there a law in place that requires you to make trash and have some specific service gather it? I'm hoping to see this one go to court and the trash company laughed out from the room.

Check the quote below. Apparently it's the code break they're going after. Either way it's ridiculous, and I hope you're right. Perhaps a law is the next step. We'll see.

The lawsuit claims House broke the city’s municipal code requiring all residential, commercial and industrial properties to contract with Allied Waste for pickup at least once a week

It doesn't sound like this guy is doing anything bad. But I can tell you what the problem is right now. Back in the day I would work a summer job for my local village (I came from a small town that wasn't even called a town or city - it was a village). We kind of have the same ordinance. You must have a trash service. The reason was because some people would not have a service and just fill their house with bags of trash. I know that sounds crazy but we would go into foreclosed and abandoned homes and find rooms filled floor to ceiling with bags of trash that made you want to vomit. It was definitely a health concern. I think this city believes that other people will do what this guy is doing but instead of recycling and getting rid of trash legally they will just start stashing it away in their homes which will draw rats and disease to the community.

OR it could be the fact that if everyone in the city did what this guy does then there would be no need for the garbage service. But I doubt that just because there are too many lazy people. You won't get many people who will recycle every piece of garbage. I don't even do that but I do recycle a lot of materials.

Growing up trash pickup was still something that the lazy or quadriplegic would choose to pay for. I remember organizing the trash and going with dad down to the dump. We got cash for certain scrap metal and recyclables and organic stuff went into the landfill.

Then all of a sudden there was a new tax for a "service" nobody asked for. The city had struck some deal with a trash removal service and suddenly every resident had to pay this company to do what nobody wanted it to do.

Trash service in cities is no different than the fed and its no-bid contracts with good-ol boy buddies.

Now I live in an even bigger city (lord knows why the hell I stay here) and these residents are so brainwashed by their big government they don't even know there is such a thing as a dump. I've had to show it to life-long residents who apparently figured every bit of their trash was magically turned into sunshine and green grass for the tax they pay.

Knowledge and independence are the biggest enemies of the state. So what do we do? We let them educate our children but that's another post.

Sorry to tell you guys but the city can't do nothing to this guy. He pays taxes, which pay for his garbage pick-up. Unless he stopped paying his taxes the city is going to lose this.

reply to post by bigbert81


Did he sign a contract agreement form with Allied to take his rubbish away weekly?

If not then Allied does not have a leg to stand on.

Originally posted by Equinox99
Sorry to tell you guys but the city can't do nothing to this guy. He pays taxes, which pay for his garbage pick-up. Unless he stopped paying his taxes the city is going to lose this.

Depends. Not all cities provide garbage serviced based on taxes. Some, you have to pay for yourself on a separate bill. Maybe I missed it but I checked for that in the article and I could not find anything that said his garbage service was paid in taxes. I'm guessing it was not because he was able to cancel it.

[edit on 1-2-2008 by zerotime]

I don't see anything about this story that requires him to produce trash.

As a member of that community, he's simply required to share the costs of trash collection just like any other municipal service, such as street-lighting, traffic signals, fire and police services, etc.

It's much more efficient, and green, for a trash service to collect the trash than allowing everyone to haul their trash to the dump.

And lets face it, a lot of people are too lazy or cheap to do that.

That's why we see crap dumped in places it shouldn't be.

A couple of good points from the OP article comments section:

They aren’t misreading the statute. It is designed to require trash removal at least once a week. Otherwise people might accumulate trash for longer periods of time, which would smell, potentially spread disease, and would be unpleasant for neighbors. They might also just have one person in the neighborhood have a trash removal contract and all use that neighbor’s trash cans, which could threaten the financial viability of disposal so that no one could get their trash removed. In any event, this sort of residential control by local government is commonplace and quite legal. While this is not exactly the sort of case it was intended to apply to, the statute is unambiguous and requires all residents to have a contract with the disposal company.

Celsius | City Sues Man for Canceling Trash Service | " mudkip "

And:

As the poster above alluded to, it’s a municipal service that’s been privatized. There’s an expectation that everybody chips in to keep it going though economy of scale. If you were to somehow completely fireproof your home, should you be excused from paying the portion of your property taxes that pays for the fire department? Should a rich person not have to pay for police just because they pay for their own private security service?

Celsius | City Sues Man for Canceling Trash Service | " Brandon Abell"

Personally, if I were the guy, I'd to do the right thing and continue to recycle with the knowledge that what I was doing was environmentally correct.

Then I'd suck it up, and pay the bill, but do something subversive like set the dumpster out on the curb and full it to the brim with water from the garden hose.

A cubic yard of water weighs nearly a ton...

He could also place his refuse bin out side and put just one item in it, say a piece of paper or a bag that had been blown down the street he picked up.

At least that way they cannot deny the fact that they would have to make a collection.