7 ms·

People are missing the point here. Stealing recycling from the curbside is not a victimless crime. Municipal waste hauling contracts are based on a balance betw

People are missing the point here. Stealing recycling from the curbside is not a victimless crime. Municipal waste hauling contracts are based on a balance between the cost to dispose of trash and less-valuable recyclables like mixed paper and the profit from high-value recyclables like aluminum and cardboard. If people start skimming all the valuable materials out of the bins, then the net cost to the city goes up, and they’ll have to either raise rates or make it up by cutting costs somewhere else.

perl4ever 6y ago
That sounds like a plausible scenario, but why would it be a problem for society in general? It seems like saying "what if gas stations can't sell candy bars at inflated prices, they'll have to raise the price of gas". Or "if credit card transaction fees are regulated, cash back deals will go away". Ok, so be it. A sudden change might be bad, but is it worth seriously fighting a new equilibrium?
- pstrateman 6y ago
  It's simple theft. It's the same problem for society as any other kind of theft.
  - Fej 6y ago
    I think you're being downvoted since you didn't explain your position, but I don't think it's wrong, just that it's probably not quite so simple.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      Property rights can be defined in a lot of different, somewhat arbitrary ways, so I think a deeper explanation for why something is bad is sometimes needed than just "it's theft". If the exclusive right to the cardboard was taken away from the people who currently claim it, then it wouldn't be theft. Would that make it ok?
  - wyattpeak 6y ago
    Maybe some of it is theft, but some of it is clearly not. From the article: > If magic pixies have nicked their waste cardboard then it means they don't have to pay a firm like mine to come and pick it up. That's not theft in any moral sense, though I can't speak to British law. The owner wanted it gone. It wasn't owed to anyone else (or they wouldn't have to pay someone to take it away). A firm is upset they didn't get a contract, that's all.
    - joshuaissac 6y ago
      It could potentially be theft in a legal sense, under s.1(1) of the Theft Act 1968,[1] depending on whether the jury finds that the conduct of the "thieves" was dishonest from the perspective of a reasonable person.[2] Although I do not think a jury would make such a finding in most cases, nor would the owners support a prosecution of those who provide what is essentially a free service. 1. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/1 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/1 2. s.74 https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2017/67.html https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2017/67.html
  - paganel 6y ago
    > It's simple theft. I don't see taking something abandoned at the side of the road as "theft".
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      It was not abandoned at the side of the road. It was deliberately placed there to be picked up by a designated waste hauling service provider.
      - paganel 6y ago
        I did the same thing with a piece of cardboard in my city just yesterday, had someone came in order to pick it up before the hauling service provider's designated hours I wouldn't have regarded that as theft. And I say that as technically still the owner of said piece of cardboard (until who ever came first to pick it up took it from the side of the street).
        gamblor956 6y ago
        Good for you. You don't get to make that decision for everyone else.
        danShumway 6y ago
        But... it doesn't sound like everyone else has a problem with this either. > "And theft is hardly ever reported by companies, because why would they? If magic pixies have nicked their waste cardboard then it means they don't have to pay a firm like mine to come and pick it up. So they are going to keep schtum [quiet]." > This is very much the opinion of the shopkeeper we spoke to in Madrid. One could flip this around. Good for you if you want to waste police resources guarding your trash bins, but why should you get to make that decision for the other shop keepers in Madrid? It's one thing for a city to go after criminals. It's another thing for the city to complain that its citizens aren't doing a good enough job helping enforce the laws that they don't care about. For sure, if someone wants to set up security cameras by their trash bin and report thefts, go wild. But I'm just having a hard time getting worked up about something where the citizens themselves don't seem to be upset.
- _Microft 6y ago
  Everyone has to bear the costs while thieves make money sounds something that is worth fighting against. Keep in mind that this is only possible because they are stealing cherrypicked materials. No municipality would allow them to run garbage removal legitimately if they would collect only valuable materials while leaving worthless at the curbside for someone else to deal with.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Referring to it as stealing when the owner put it out as trash makes it lose the moral cachet. I don't have a hugely positive view of garbage men as crusaders for truth and justice. I have no clue what separates legitimate garbagemen from illegitimate ones. So far the only difference to me, the theoretical person who had his trash taken before the day I expected it to be taken, is it's a bit cheaper, so it seems like all of the harm is on someone completely unrelated to me. If I were to pay these men to take the trash away, would that be better for the city?
    - rvnx 6y ago
      The garbage monopoly makes me think about the cases of cinemas. The core of their activity is at a loss and they make up for high profit on the side (selling drinks). Then the cinema kicks you out if they catch you with a cola you bought in another shop. All the shop did, was to provide a better service, at a better price. This situation could stop if the law would stop allowing that. The cinemas wouldn't die; the movie distributors would ask for less and less fees. Now the distributors can ask for high fee (up to 90%) because they know the cinemas charge for these add-ons and make some turnover.
      - sukilot 6y ago
        That would raise prices for tickets. Concession prices are there so rich people subsidize poorer people.
    - _Microft 6y ago
      Selling these resources and your bin taxes [0] are what helps the municipal garbage service covering their costs. If you pay another service to take away the more valuable parts of the trash, you would sort of pay twice, as your municipal provider would not be able to make money on these resources and needed to cover their costs in a different way. [0] At least here in Germany one can not opt out of this which is a good thing in my opinion. Otherwise some people undoubtely would opt out which would leave us with either unhandled trash or the public having to pay for their trash instead.
- mint2 6y ago
  > "if credit card transaction fees are regulated, cash back deals will go away". Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing? It would be great for both businesses and consumers. (although it would depend on how successfully it was executed) And it would be a benefit to society if gas was priced higher rather than subsidized by junk food and the demographics more prone to buying it. Especially due to a certain something called climate change, and how cheaper gas helps suvs and other low mileage cars.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I didn't say it like it's a bad thing. The whole point I was making is as a first approximation, one should assume it's a wash.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Yeah, phrased that way it makes me wonder why do we even accept the concept of discounting price on some good by raising price of another good to cover for it? In your example, it leads to artificially deflated gas prices, which isn't good for the society at large.
  - dwohnitmok 6y ago
    This is effectively how taxes on goods work. Governments make certain goods or services (or more intangibles such as income) cost more (taxes) which they then use to provide discounts on other goods or services (e.g. library services, postal services, reducing or eliminating healthcare costs, etc.). The main difference from taxes is that this is private enterprise vs a purely government endeavor, but in that respect it's really not very different from other government regulations on private enterprise as well as contracts between purely private entities (there are plenty of proposed and actual regulations and contracts on bundling goods and services, which is effectively what this is, just with more flexibility than with usual bundling). This shows up all over the place. Governments can force health insurance providers (private or governmental) to bundle both unprofitable at-risk patients together with profitable healthy patients. A fly-by-night insurance provider can swoop in and offer lower premiums to those profitable healthy patients. Nominally this seems great! Lower rates for folks who don't need it (similar to the garbage scenario, garbage gets picked up for those people dumping valuable garbage!). But now the incentive structure is getting pretty messed up and those at-risk patients are vulnerable to a lot of rate hikes since the premiums paid by healthy patients are being "skimmed" away. Put another way, bundling goods and services in certain ways lets you control incentives, which can be used for good or bad ends. However, surreptitiously unbundling those things after there's already been an agreed-upon bundling can wreak havoc on that initial incentive structure.
- danShumway 6y ago
  A couple people have brought up what you're saying, and it's a somewhat convincing argument to me, at least at first glance. It's not just that having a new equilibrium is fine -- the existing equilibrium where cardboard offsets the cost of expensive trash is explicitly what we don't want as a society. We want people to throw away more cardboard, because we want it to get recycled. A system where throwing away 'unprofitable' trash costs more than throwing away cardboard seems like a net good. Even at a personal level, if the 'thefts' causes cities to raise prices across the board, but all of the cardboard is getting pulled out my trash by 'thieves', thus decreasing my overall volume and cost, then it seems like it still kind of evens out for me as an individual and rewards me for throwing out recyclable materials. And communities/households that reliably throw out a lot of cardboard will be hit by 'thefts' more often, which will lower their trash bills even more, which is... yet another outcome we actually want -- systemic, community-wide, reliable disposal of recyclable materials.
Ansil849 6y ago
What if I decide to dispose of my own cardboard myself instead of leaving it out. Is this also 'stealing'?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- PTOB 6y ago
  This right here. I save metal scraps and other valuable recyclables and take them to a junk dealer for a few bucks when I can make more than the price of transport gas. Most things that go in my trash bin are things I can't profit from.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
Ok well where I live every two weeks they come pick up "big trash" which can be old sofas, tvs, but also recyclable plastic etc. Lots of people drive by the night before things are picked up and pick up the things they want, maybe because they will fix them up and sell them or maybe because they will fix them up and use them. I think from the viewpoint of the Danish Government and the city where I live it isn't a victimless crime, it isn't a crime at all. And I'm quite happy when I throw something out and someone else finds a use for it.
- ggus 6y ago
  I feel many people focus too much on the "Recycling" forgetting about the other two "R"s: "Reduce", and in this specific case, "Reuse".
  - InitialLastName 6y ago
    Importantly, those other two R's come first.
- kawfey 6y ago
  I've noticed in my neighborhood, there's this guy who drives around in his old beat up pickup truck absolutely full of junk - broken air conditioners, fans, lamps, furniture, TVs, wood scrap, mangled bicycles, you name it. He picks up nearly anything you leave out in the alley, and breaks them down for scrap and recycling, or repairs it to resell. He drives by every day, and even though it's apparently a crime, he isn't prosecuted, and the community is thankful for his service. Our official "big trash" pick up is once a month, and some months it unexpectedly doesn't run, and the alley's would be quite full of trash without him.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Where I live (Poland), there are local Facebook groups (usually called "Attention, the garbage truck is on its way - $city"), where people upload photos of the things they see dumped curbside along with location data, so that other people can come there and pick stuff they could use. I'm really happy those exists, and coupled with local "giveaway" groups, they provide opportunities to intercept reusable items both before they're thrown away, and after.
twblalock 6y ago
Municipal waste hauling contracts sound like a bad combination of government-granted monopolies and rent-seeking. If someone else wants to compete in that space they should be allowed to.

perl4ever 6y ago

That sounds like a plausible scenario, but why would it be a problem for society in general? It seems like saying "what if gas stations can't sell candy bars at inflated prices, they'll have to raise the price of gas". Or "if credit card transaction fees are regulated, cash back deals will go away". Ok, so be it. A sudden change might be bad, but is it worth seriously fighting a new equilibrium?

pstrateman 6y ago
It's simple theft. It's the same problem for society as any other kind of theft.
- Fej 6y ago
  I think you're being downvoted since you didn't explain your position, but I don't think it's wrong, just that it's probably not quite so simple.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Property rights can be defined in a lot of different, somewhat arbitrary ways, so I think a deeper explanation for why something is bad is sometimes needed than just "it's theft". If the exclusive right to the cardboard was taken away from the people who currently claim it, then it wouldn't be theft. Would that make it ok?
- wyattpeak 6y ago
  Maybe some of it is theft, but some of it is clearly not. From the article: > If magic pixies have nicked their waste cardboard then it means they don't have to pay a firm like mine to come and pick it up. That's not theft in any moral sense, though I can't speak to British law. The owner wanted it gone. It wasn't owed to anyone else (or they wouldn't have to pay someone to take it away). A firm is upset they didn't get a contract, that's all.
  - joshuaissac 6y ago
    It could potentially be theft in a legal sense, under s.1(1) of the Theft Act 1968,[1] depending on whether the jury finds that the conduct of the "thieves" was dishonest from the perspective of a reasonable person.[2] Although I do not think a jury would make such a finding in most cases, nor would the owners support a prosecution of those who provide what is essentially a free service. 1. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/1 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/1 2. s.74 https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2017/67.html https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2017/67.html
- paganel 6y ago
  > It's simple theft. I don't see taking something abandoned at the side of the road as "theft".
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    It was not abandoned at the side of the road. It was deliberately placed there to be picked up by a designated waste hauling service provider.
    - paganel 6y ago
      I did the same thing with a piece of cardboard in my city just yesterday, had someone came in order to pick it up before the hauling service provider's designated hours I wouldn't have regarded that as theft. And I say that as technically still the owner of said piece of cardboard (until who ever came first to pick it up took it from the side of the street).
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        Good for you. You don't get to make that decision for everyone else.
        danShumway 6y ago
        But... it doesn't sound like everyone else has a problem with this either. > "And theft is hardly ever reported by companies, because why would they? If magic pixies have nicked their waste cardboard then it means they don't have to pay a firm like mine to come and pick it up. So they are going to keep schtum [quiet]." > This is very much the opinion of the shopkeeper we spoke to in Madrid. One could flip this around. Good for you if you want to waste police resources guarding your trash bins, but why should you get to make that decision for the other shop keepers in Madrid? It's one thing for a city to go after criminals. It's another thing for the city to complain that its citizens aren't doing a good enough job helping enforce the laws that they don't care about. For sure, if someone wants to set up security cameras by their trash bin and report thefts, go wild. But I'm just having a hard time getting worked up about something where the citizens themselves don't seem to be upset.
_Microft 6y ago
Everyone has to bear the costs while thieves make money sounds something that is worth fighting against. Keep in mind that this is only possible because they are stealing cherrypicked materials. No municipality would allow them to run garbage removal legitimately if they would collect only valuable materials while leaving worthless at the curbside for someone else to deal with.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Referring to it as stealing when the owner put it out as trash makes it lose the moral cachet. I don't have a hugely positive view of garbage men as crusaders for truth and justice. I have no clue what separates legitimate garbagemen from illegitimate ones. So far the only difference to me, the theoretical person who had his trash taken before the day I expected it to be taken, is it's a bit cheaper, so it seems like all of the harm is on someone completely unrelated to me. If I were to pay these men to take the trash away, would that be better for the city?
  - rvnx 6y ago
    The garbage monopoly makes me think about the cases of cinemas. The core of their activity is at a loss and they make up for high profit on the side (selling drinks). Then the cinema kicks you out if they catch you with a cola you bought in another shop. All the shop did, was to provide a better service, at a better price. This situation could stop if the law would stop allowing that. The cinemas wouldn't die; the movie distributors would ask for less and less fees. Now the distributors can ask for high fee (up to 90%) because they know the cinemas charge for these add-ons and make some turnover.
    - sukilot 6y ago
      That would raise prices for tickets. Concession prices are there so rich people subsidize poorer people.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    Selling these resources and your bin taxes [0] are what helps the municipal garbage service covering their costs. If you pay another service to take away the more valuable parts of the trash, you would sort of pay twice, as your municipal provider would not be able to make money on these resources and needed to cover their costs in a different way. [0] At least here in Germany one can not opt out of this which is a good thing in my opinion. Otherwise some people undoubtely would opt out which would leave us with either unhandled trash or the public having to pay for their trash instead.
mint2 6y ago
> "if credit card transaction fees are regulated, cash back deals will go away". Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing? It would be great for both businesses and consumers. (although it would depend on how successfully it was executed) And it would be a benefit to society if gas was priced higher rather than subsidized by junk food and the demographics more prone to buying it. Especially due to a certain something called climate change, and how cheaper gas helps suvs and other low mileage cars.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I didn't say it like it's a bad thing. The whole point I was making is as a first approximation, one should assume it's a wash.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Yeah, phrased that way it makes me wonder why do we even accept the concept of discounting price on some good by raising price of another good to cover for it? In your example, it leads to artificially deflated gas prices, which isn't good for the society at large.
- dwohnitmok 6y ago
  This is effectively how taxes on goods work. Governments make certain goods or services (or more intangibles such as income) cost more (taxes) which they then use to provide discounts on other goods or services (e.g. library services, postal services, reducing or eliminating healthcare costs, etc.). The main difference from taxes is that this is private enterprise vs a purely government endeavor, but in that respect it's really not very different from other government regulations on private enterprise as well as contracts between purely private entities (there are plenty of proposed and actual regulations and contracts on bundling goods and services, which is effectively what this is, just with more flexibility than with usual bundling). This shows up all over the place. Governments can force health insurance providers (private or governmental) to bundle both unprofitable at-risk patients together with profitable healthy patients. A fly-by-night insurance provider can swoop in and offer lower premiums to those profitable healthy patients. Nominally this seems great! Lower rates for folks who don't need it (similar to the garbage scenario, garbage gets picked up for those people dumping valuable garbage!). But now the incentive structure is getting pretty messed up and those at-risk patients are vulnerable to a lot of rate hikes since the premiums paid by healthy patients are being "skimmed" away. Put another way, bundling goods and services in certain ways lets you control incentives, which can be used for good or bad ends. However, surreptitiously unbundling those things after there's already been an agreed-upon bundling can wreak havoc on that initial incentive structure.
danShumway 6y ago
A couple people have brought up what you're saying, and it's a somewhat convincing argument to me, at least at first glance. It's not just that having a new equilibrium is fine -- the existing equilibrium where cardboard offsets the cost of expensive trash is explicitly what we don't want as a society. We want people to throw away more cardboard, because we want it to get recycled. A system where throwing away 'unprofitable' trash costs more than throwing away cardboard seems like a net good. Even at a personal level, if the 'thefts' causes cities to raise prices across the board, but all of the cardboard is getting pulled out my trash by 'thieves', thus decreasing my overall volume and cost, then it seems like it still kind of evens out for me as an individual and rewards me for throwing out recyclable materials. And communities/households that reliably throw out a lot of cardboard will be hit by 'thefts' more often, which will lower their trash bills even more, which is... yet another outcome we actually want -- systemic, community-wide, reliable disposal of recyclable materials.

Ansil849 6y ago

What if I decide to dispose of my own cardboard myself instead of leaving it out. Is this also 'stealing'?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PTOB 6y ago
This right here. I save metal scraps and other valuable recyclables and take them to a junk dealer for a few bucks when I can make more than the price of transport gas. Most things that go in my trash bin are things I can't profit from.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

Ok well where I live every two weeks they come pick up "big trash" which can be old sofas, tvs, but also recyclable plastic etc. Lots of people drive by the night before things are picked up and pick up the things they want, maybe because they will fix them up and sell them or maybe because they will fix them up and use them. I think from the viewpoint of the Danish Government and the city where I live it isn't a victimless crime, it isn't a crime at all. And I'm quite happy when I throw something out and someone else finds a use for it.

ggus 6y ago
I feel many people focus too much on the "Recycling" forgetting about the other two "R"s: "Reduce", and in this specific case, "Reuse".
- InitialLastName 6y ago
  Importantly, those other two R's come first.
kawfey 6y ago
I've noticed in my neighborhood, there's this guy who drives around in his old beat up pickup truck absolutely full of junk - broken air conditioners, fans, lamps, furniture, TVs, wood scrap, mangled bicycles, you name it. He picks up nearly anything you leave out in the alley, and breaks them down for scrap and recycling, or repairs it to resell. He drives by every day, and even though it's apparently a crime, he isn't prosecuted, and the community is thankful for his service. Our official "big trash" pick up is once a month, and some months it unexpectedly doesn't run, and the alley's would be quite full of trash without him.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Where I live (Poland), there are local Facebook groups (usually called "Attention, the garbage truck is on its way - $city"), where people upload photos of the things they see dumped curbside along with location data, so that other people can come there and pick stuff they could use. I'm really happy those exists, and coupled with local "giveaway" groups, they provide opportunities to intercept reusable items both before they're thrown away, and after.

twblalock 6y ago

Municipal waste hauling contracts sound like a bad combination of government-granted monopolies and rent-seeking. If someone else wants to compete in that space they should be allowed to.