3 ms·
> I do wonder why your city government is in charge of yard waste, though? I've lived a lot of places, mostly very liberal, and it's always been a private compa
by tablespoon 4y ago
> I do wonder why your city government is in charge of yard waste, though? I've lived a lot of places, mostly very liberal, and it's always been a private company hauling away trash/recycle/yard debris.
City run trash collection is totally a thing in some areas, and it actually makes sense if done well. I once lived in a conservative city that had it (and did it well).
Where I live now, we have private trash collection. That meant we had dozens of garbage trucks from different companies driving through the neighborhood on every trash day, until one of my neighbors organized everyone to switch to one single company.
- swearwolf 4y agoIn my experience, you’ll typically find the most inefficiency when private companies have been contracted to do this kind of work. Theoretically, they should be incentivized to be more efficient, otherwise they might lose their contract. However, because the contracting process offers so many opportunities for people to trade favors, in reality once a company has the contract they’re effectively locked in. At that point, their incentive is to do the bare minimum possible to keep their own costs down and their profits high.
- jdmichal 4y agoInterestingly, my neighborhood was mostly on a single company, due to several HOAs banding together and negotiating a group deal. But the company has now announced that it will no longer be honoring the group discount, so it's probably going to fracture again.