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What’s one thing that would instantly improve your city?
We’re having high suburban drama here in my leafy suburb outside of Boston over…trash.
Due to budget constraints and a failed vote to raise our own taxes, the town has implemented a new trash policy whereby every family gets one small trash bin. (Recycling bins are separate.)
It’s proving to be very dramatic and upsetting to a lot of people. If you fill your bin and still have more trash, you have to buy special $15 bags to dispose of the rest.
Since my husband and I are empty nesters, we can deal. For families with young children, disposable diapers alone would fill up about half of these little bins. It’s an actual hardship for them.
In the grand scheme of things, this is a relatively minor problem, but it’s also just another way we’re making life harder for young families.
Conservatives say they want more babies and growing families, yet they continually vote down money to pay for schools and other services that families need.
50 Happens 
It’s hard to tell in the photo, but this can looks skinnier than the one my town provides.
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It’s pretty tiny. Capacity is 35 gallons.
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😳
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I was thinking the same thing 😳
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That’s maddening. In my town we pay $3.50 per tag that we affix to our trash bags. There’s a weight limit but I can usually stuff two white kitchen bags in a big black one… so we spend $7.00 a week. As long as they’re tagged, you can put out as many as you want. Though we have to take our cardboard, plastic and metal to a recycling center that’s only open for a few hours two days a week. This year glass was discontinued which is bothersome.
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Interesting. I wonder why glass was discontinued. I have real doubts about what is actually getting recycled these days.
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As do I.
Our little town doesn’t have a huge tax base and has to pay private companies to haul away our recycling. We used to have curbside pickup until it became too expensive. Now the company who used to take the crushed glass doesn’t want it anymore because the overseas market they sold to doesn’t want it. Maine is very environmentally conscious and it’s getting extremely expensive to properly dispose of old appliances, tires etc. … which makes people more likely to dump things in the woods. It’s a vicious circle.
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It’s getting very hard to dispose of things in MA too. I think people here drive up to Southern NH and dump stuff like mattresses.
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