Fix for "Sensible Eco Living" unemptyable trash can

I've been a convert to motion-activated trash cans since my wife brought one into our household a number of years back. When they work, they're wonderful. They keep the stink in the can and your hands clean. The downside is, despite being a pretty simple piece of technology, they always seem to develop problems before too long. Our current one was sticking all the time and it became apparent that the mechanism had literally blown a gasket and it wasn't going to be salvageable. Time for a replacement.

Sensible Eco Living 21 Gallon Trash Can (also sold as Household Essentials EKO 35 L)

We picked up one of these bad boys at Costco for $49.99: the Sensible Eco Living motion activated trash can. They had one on display, fully operational, so we got to try before buying. It seemed to work really well and the price was right. It was also a good bit bigger than our old one, requiring 33 gallon trash bags, which actually made me happy. Over a week I fell in love with the new giant trash can. It opened so smoothly, speaking of the fine engineering within. It was so cavernous, it could easily accommodate the largest of hermetically sealed plastic packing waste products. Everything was great...

Until it was time to empty it.

This turns out to be one of those "did you actually ever use this thing" moments. Really, Mr. Sensible Eco Living, did you? Because it turns out there's a basic design premise that every trash can abides by. One that's so obvious, you don't even think about it, until faced with the product that totally missed Trash Can Design 101.

The trash can must be at least as big at the top, as it is at the bottom.

This trash can has a system of two interlocking rings to hold the trash bag internally. You put the top of the trash bag through the inner ring, wrap it around the outside of it, and then pop it into the outer ring. It holds the bag securely and it doesn't stick out of the can. The problem is, the frame of the outer ring reduces the size of the top of the trash can by almost 1" all around.

Can you imagine what happens when you try to pull a bag stuffed full of trash through this literal bottleneck. Yeah, that's right. Cursing, fist shaking, ripped trash bags, moaning, questioning, frantic googling (revealing nothing, since this seems to be a very new product), and ultimately, product hacking to fix their idiotic design flaw.

How To Make It Possible To Empty This Thing?

Fortunately the solution to this problem is pretty simple, and really without any downsides.

Pop out the outer ring, which you probably already did in frustration while trying to get your full bag of trash out. You'll need to manhandle it a bit to get it off, but it's not brittle so you won't break it.

In the picture at right you can see the ring detached from the can. There are 12 tabs around the perimeter which hold it in place, 3 on each side.

Cut those things off.

There is absolutely no need to for the outer ring to be permanently attached to the trash can. Gravity works just fine. The easiest way is with a razor blade scraper tool. (Don't try to do it with just a razor blade or you'll probably hurt yourself). The ABS plastic can be cut with some effort, just make sure you use a tool that's sharp and offers you a good grip.

Once those tabs are gone, you can pop out the outer ring and the inner ring effortlessly when it's time to change the trash.

The 'hood provides for all needs

The weekend couch olympics

Sunday, N. and I were bestowed with a hand-me-down couch from her sister. Since our evil puppy believes he owns most of the furniture in the house, and identifies things as his own by chewing holes in them, this was a welcome upgrade. And, I can say it now, because N. and I have finally gotten this out in the open: her old couch just wasn't that comfortable. It looked nice enough, but it was just a little too short to stretch out on comfortably, and not quite deep enough for proper laziness, especially when shared with another human being and/or one or more dogs.

So we picked up the couch and and the shuffle began. First, I had to remove another old couch that had been taking up space in the basement for a couple years to make room for one of the pieces of the new set that we weren't going to use right away. I remembered that it had been almost impossible to get in there in the first place, and I was dreading going through that exercise in reverse. So instead I destroyed it. With nothing more than a hammer and a box-cutter, I had that thing reduced to a pile of sticks and rags in an hour.

Next, in a complex dance necessitated due to limited space and dogs, we had to temporarily move the old couch to the dining room, move dogs around and close doors, and get the new one in. By some miracle the new couch fit easily through the door and it was in the house in no time.

Out with the Older

I should have converted the old couch into a Tailgate Couch^®

But now, the old couch: what to do with it? It was actually in OK shape, and only a few years old. The major downside was single dog-chew hole in one of the integrated back cushions, but it was hardly visible and could probably be repaired by someone so inclined. We figured one of our friends might be interested in inheriting it, so we didn't just want to toss it. But nor did we want to spend a lot of effort finding a home for it. So the plan was to take it around to the backyard and cover it, hopefully finding a taker before the elements or wildlife got to it.

But the fates solved that problem, and in record time. Our neighbors two doors down have been having an ongoing moving sale for the last couple weeks. Basically, their front yard and sidewalk have been a turkish bazaar. And a remarkably popular one -- their stuff was actually better than a lot of the weekend yardsales we've been to around town. It seemed like people were around their house all day long.

So we threw the old couch on the truck and let them know that if any of their customers were interested, they could have it. We struck paydirt almost immediately: one of their friends inspected the wares and it was removed from the truck within the hour.

You gotta love the 'hood.

Now I just have to deal with the mountain of rubble in the backyard from the old couch and a long-overdue yard cleanup...

No Bag Tax For Charm City

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, (Lucky) Charm City declined to move forward with a proposed 25 cent bag tax.

What they appear poised to do instead, however, is a remarkably reasonable sounding alternative. Rather than outright banning bags, they would require any affected business that wants to hand out plastic bags to participate in a "plastic bag reduction" program.

The terms of this program are as follows:

• Stores must not give out bags unless the customer asks for them.
  
• Stores must collect bags for recycling.
  
• Stores must offer reusable bags for sale, and post signs encouraging their use.
  

The new policy would also require stores to report on the number of disposable bags they hand out, as well as the number of reusable bags they sell. This information will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.

Nobody in the US is likely to pass a 25 cent bag tax.

Typical denizens of Seattle

If there's one thing we can all agree upon, it's that Seattle, Washington is a bastion of patchouli-wearing, clove-smoking, bio-fuel-using hippies. And yet even so, these guys soundly defeated a 25 cent bag tax in a referendum last year. If Seattle isn't willing to tax plastic bags like they were unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes, then really, who is.

I have to believe that anyone who proposes such an onerous tax on something that has about the same environmental impact per person per year as driving your car for a half-hour, really doesn't think it's going to pass. Well, maybe in Seattle, the tofu-eaters really thought they could pass it. But not anywhere else.

The reality is probably slightly more sinister: whoever wrote this legislation in Baltimore knew full well it would never pass the laugh test. But in doing so, they were able to appear to be progressive among the compost-heapers, while being able to quietly reassure the business community that it would never pass.

And sinister though this may be, it's also smart. Because it paves the way for a much more reasonable approach to the issue.

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Sin taxes in DC

DC has among the lowest taxes in the United States on gas, beer, and liquor. Yet we choose to raise revenue though a regressive tax on consumer purchases.

Beer: $0.09/gallon. Tied with one state for lowest in the nation.
Liquor: $1.50/gallon. Only Vermont is lower.
Cigarettes: $2.50/pack - slightly above the median.
Gasoline: $0.20/gallon. Only 11 states are lower.

Oil, when used to make a plastic bag: $10.00/gallon (approx. 200 bags/gallon)

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Anyone who reads this blog knows I oppose DC's bag tax, primarily because I think that it's using a big stick to swat a tiny gnat. I don't think bags are a major contributor to the trash problem, and I know they represent a tiny fraction of the oil/greenhouse gas problem. So I think that implementing a brand-new tax that's regressive, inconvenient, and is likely to have inconsequential benefits, is a really bad idea. Apart from the minimal benefits it will likely create, it wastes valuable political capital that could have been saved up for something that would be really effective, like a bottle bill.

But I'm an environmentalist and I am 100% behind efforts to change people's habits -- but without legislating that change where it's not absolutely necessary to solve a big problem. In this case, the problem is not big, and the tax is not necessary to effect change.

There's something about human psychology that makes people resist doing things that are good for them, even if they're easy, when you tell them it's going to be illegal to do that. But if you encourage people, and help them understand the benefits without shoving it down their throats, they will, in time, usually adopt that change. It's a simple as catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.

An example of this kind of policy is the U.S. EPA and U.S. DOE's ENERGY STAR program -- which I actually work on in my career. ENERGY STAR is a labeling program that identifies the most efficient products in its class. The basic premise is to change consumer attitudes with education. Let them know that they'll save money, educate them about energy use in consumer products and appliances, and make it easy to distinguish between energy-hogs and energy-sippers. The program, which has been around for nearly two decades now, has been remarkably successful. And the industry changes and reacts to consumer preferences. For example, the market share of front-loading clothes washers, which use much less water and electricity than conventional top-loading clothes washers, is over 35% in the U.S. today, compared to essentially zero fifteen years ago.

And all that without a law that told you what you had to buy.

Kudos to Baltimore for rejecting the "big stick" approach to the bag issue. I hope this passes and am very interested to see the results.

2010: Bagging Plastic To Spite Our Face

We implemented the bag tax in DC. As expected, it's resulted in a dramatic dropoff in the number of plastic bags people use at the supermarket. Supposedly this is going to help the Anacostia.

The great irony of this tax is that the more effective it is at changing consumer behavaior regarding supermarket bags, the less effective it will be at cleaning up the Anacostia.

DC projected $3.55 million from this tax in 2010, and slightly less ($3 million) in 2011. The figured drops off dramatically from there. I am not sure how they came up with this math - e.g. why people would suddely, two years into the tax, start paying for the bags half as often. Almost everyone I know changed their behavior pretty much immediately.

But lets look at a few other figures too.

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Supermarket plastic bags used annually in the U.S.: 100 billion.*
Population of the U.S.: 305 million
Bags used per person per year (est): 327

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Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Well...

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Gallons of oil consumed annually in the U.S.: 318 billion
Gallons of oil needed to make 100 billion bags: 500 million
Percentage of U.S.'s oil consumption used on supermarket bags: 1.57%
Gallons of oil used per person per year on plastic bags: 1.6 gallons

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That's right. 1.6 gallons.

Let's assume that the numbers I got are low estimates, since they were from the Wall Street Journal (even though they were cited by a bag-recycling web site.)

Let's quadruple them. Now you have 6.4 gallons per year.

How many gallons of gas do you use every week? How much energy do you use to heat and cool your house, and power your TV so you can watch "Real World DC?" Trust me. It's far more than that every week.

Okay, well we need money to clean up the Anacostia. What about the revenue?

Let's look at some basic figures for a minute.

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Population of DC: 600,000
Bags used per year in DC @ 327 per person: 196 million
Total potential annual revenue from the bag tax, if nobody stopped using plastic bags: @ 3.5 cents per bag**: 6.8 million
DC's estimate for years 1 and 2: 3.5 million and $3 million

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Does anyone else think that DC's estimates are, er, a bit optimistic? Like absolute fantasy? That would mean that the tax resulted in only a 50% reduction in bag use.

Have you guys been to a supermarket since January 1st? Nobody's paying the tax.

I see a lot of bottles and cans. Not so many bags.

Further, the "per person per year" estimates of carryout bag use include all the bags that are not subject to the tax, that is, from establishments that don't sell food. Like Home Depot and Marshall's. And any place that doesn't have sitdown seating is also not subject, like crappy chinese carryout places.

My estimate is that bag use is reduced by 80-85% in the first year. My estimate for the revenue from this tax is under $1 million in the first year.

OK, so we're not going to save the planet by banning bags, and there probably won't be a lot of cash coming in either. But woo hoo, 80% less trash, right?

As readers of my blog know, I hate trash. I pick it up from my street every day when I walk my dog. I am an environmentalist. I would like nothing more than to see some kind of useful legislation passed to help trash and the environment - like a bottle bill. I am personally, intimately familiar with exactly what kind of trash ends up on the streets of DC, and consequently, in the river.

So what I can't help wondering is, have these people who want to save the river ever looked at it? Do they live in DC? Do they have any concept of the kinds of trash that are produced in this town?

This NRDC blog post which is, ironically, a love-fest for the DC bag tax, has several choice pictures of the Anacostia. One of them is reproduced above.

Please take a look at those pictures and tell me, honestly, what difference you think there will be because there are 80% fewer plastic bags being handed out at Safeway. Mind you, Eddie Leonard's Chinese Carryout will still be giving plastic bags, and certainly everyone drinking their Schlitz Malt Liqour on the sidewalk will still be buying one for 5 cents. I am pretty sure that the segment of the population that tosses their 24 ounce can-in-bag on the sidewalk after conusmption will not be bringing their own canvas bag to the liquor store.

I can see, I am pretty sure, a single plastic bag in all four of the pictures on that blog post. On the other hand, I see an unbelievable number of bottles, cans, paper, tires, whatever. Basically, everything BUT plastic bags.

That's because plastic bags are a tiny portion of the trash we produce.

The people who want to clean up the Anacostia know this. But their goal was to get an appropriation of money that went directly to their cause, not to reduce trash. Unfortunately, it is almost certain that they will get neither, but the residents of DC will get a really inconvenient and regressive tax.

I want to clean up the Anacostia. The right way to do this is to figure out how much it would cost to clean and maintain the river, and appropriate it from the general fund. This means we all pay our fair share, and it gets done.

I also want to improve the overall trash situation in DC. I want nothing more. I am an anti-trash crusader. But every day, when I pick up trash, you know what I see? Bottles and cans. The only plastic bags I ever see contain carryout restaurant trash, which won't be taxed, and liquor bottles, which certainly won't go away.

If we want to solve trash in this city, and the Anacsotia, we need a bottle bill. It has worked almost overnight in every place it's been implemented. Even as some people don't change their habits, others are happy to clean up the world for 5 or 10 cents a bottle. It's such a no-brainer.

But it takes more work than a bag tax. On the other hand, it will also do something. But around here everyone is so selfishly focused on their cause that they are willing sacrifice the greater good for a short-term benefit to their single cause. The so-called environmentalists who got this thing passed should be ashamed of themselves. There is already a great deal of backlash in the blog and media from people who think the tax is stupid, and complain because now they have to buy bags to replace the ones that used to be free. The ones we used for dog crap and trash and so on. Oh yeah - and trash bags you buy are made with about 5 to 10 times as much oil as a typical supermarket bag. How awesome for the environment is that?

So at the end of the day, we have a tax that will almost certainly raise very little money, inconvenience and annoy many, and have little or no impact on trash.

But we also lost something very valuable: goodwill. If we ever had a chance of passing a bottle bill in the near future, we wasted that political capital on this bag tax. Imagine what all those people who hate the bag tax will say when you try to convince them to return their bottles? Probably, "enough is enough."

So thanks, so-called environmentalists, for selfishly taking an opportunity to make some real change, and squandering it for your narrowly focused cause.

Myself, I'll still be picking up trash every day just as always, except I'll be paying for the bags to pick it up with now. The Anaocostia will probably look pretty much the same, and we've lost any chance at a bottle bill.





*Source: The Wall Street Journal (via reusablebags.com)

** The bag tax is 4 cents per bag, or 3 cents per bag if a business offers a reusable bag credit. 1 cent of the 5 cent tax goes directly to the business and is not paid to DC. I split the difference for this estimate.

Love Note to Fort Totten

Fort Totten Transfer Station, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Though I criticize the government of DC, from time to time, there are many things I love about living in the city. At the top of that list is not the gorgeous architecture, nor the Metro, nor the monuments, nor Rock Creek Park, nor even Target. No, it is the giant mountain of trash that resides in Northeast Washington, in smelling distance of Catholic University. It is the Fort Totten Transfer Station.

Many, perhaps most, live their lives never having set foot on the hallowed ground at 4900 Bates Rd, NE. To those, I say, what you cannot see still serves you daily. Because the refuse of your existence, the by-products of your modern life, most likely rest in this purgatory before being delivered to their final resting spot. Probably in New Jersey. But I embrace this place, I choose to interact with it at a personal level, to commune with the compost. In fact, I went there Saturday. Three times.

The glory of Fort Totten cannot be understated. Where else in the world can one load up thier pickup truck with all manner of debris, be it trash or treasure, rubble or rubbish, and liberate your home from its shadow? It's remarkably convenient location is barely 8 minutes' drive from my home, yet in this short time I can make a truckload of trash vanish forever.

The old couch that festers in your backyard, the bags of construction debris from the never-ending home improvement or housecleaning projects. All those things can become a memory with one short trip to nirvana, northeast.

At Fort Totten you will be greeted by the smiling sanitiation workers who, upon inspection of your DC driver's licence, the passport to perpetual purging pleasure, will point you to a pile for perusal and pillaging. Oh yes - the transfer station giveth as it taketh away. As I was unloading one of my three loads of rubbish this weekend, I salvaged a perfectly functional security gate, needing only minor repair, callously dumped by someone who didn't see its inner beauty. Unfortunately it didn't fit the door where I intended to use it. But no matter, because I will surely be there again sometime in the not-too-distant future. And then I will return the gate, perhaps for collection by some other trash-picker, or perhaps for it's final demise.

To all those who have never known the pleasure of watching a truckload of trash disappear from your life forever, I can only say, go. Now. To Fort Totten. Take your trash, your tree limbs, your old furniture. Take that junk that fills your basement or your backyard, and bring it to the place where it belongs. Fort Totten calls for your garbage. Its appetite is insatiable.

The Daily Trash: The Story Told By Rubbish

I wrote a while ago about my new hobby of picking up trash when I walk the dog in the morning. While not as glamorous as collecting cars or as interesting as beekeeping, it does have its moments. And it keeps the couple blocks around where I live looking pretty clean, which is nice.

But while some people read tea-leaves or speak to mediums to understand their world and predict the future, I look to my trash. It is a bellweather of the world around me, a sign of the times. Through trash, some mysteries of the universe can be revealed, if only slightly, while at the same time, the trash puts forth new questions daily. Such as, how did that 5 foot long section of someone's bathroom wall end up on the corner of 10th and Spring?

This week, occurring in greater frequency are rubber gloves. I have picked up at least three of them since Monday. This can only mean one thing: swine flu paranoia. I have not yet found a respirator on the ground. You know, those things people wear while sanding drywall which probably have absolutely no benefit versus airborne contagions. But I expect I will see them soon as H1N1 fear grips the nation.

Several days ago, the normal tranquility of Columbia Heights was disturbed by paramedics on my street. By normal tranquility, I mean police helicopters, gunshots, and drunken yelling. This is not the first time I've seen such things, but as we watched a stretcher emerge from our neighors' home, we wondered if things were not more serious this time.

The funeral procession observed yesterday afternoon by N. confirmed this. This morning's trash was a solemn reminder of the passing of a man whom I knew mostly by the clinking of his spoon against his cereal bowl as he ate his morning breakfast on the front porch. That sound from a few doors away, which had become a familiar part of my morning ritual last summer as I enjoyed a cup of coffee on my own porch, has been silenced. Rest in peace.

The final piece of trash will close this post on a lighter note. Outside "The Asylum," a DC outpatient mental health clinic near my home, I found this blister pack on the ground. Excited by the discovery of what I thought might be actual drugs, I peered purposefully at the pill pack. What would it be? Antibiotics? Antidepressants? A mystery drug which I would have to eat, identity unknown, like Alice and her mushrooms, in order to determine its true purpose? Would I take the blue bill??

No - it was ExtenZe. You know, the natural supplement for male enhancement you see relentlessly adertised by that smiling nerdy guy who gets wayyy more play than his much-better-looking buddies. Who says size doesn't matter... big is back!

Geeky sidenote: Am I the only person who has noticed the similarity between the "ExtenZe" logo and the logo for "ExistenZe," the creepy David Cronenburg flick from 1999 which is almost identically named? I made this connection the first time I saw one of those ExtenZe advertisements on cable TV but never dug further into this important matter.

It appears that I am not alone. A blogger answers the question we have all been wondering: eXistenZ vs. ExtenZe: Which is Better? Click through for the shocking conclusion.

Three Questionable Waste Disposal Decisions

I wrote not too long ago about the daily proliferation of trash on my street. Since then, I've been pretty good about picking up trash every day on the three or four blocks where I walk the VERY BAD DOG who does not deserve such long walks because he tried to attack my neighbor and routinely ignores me and pees on the kitchen floor whenever our backs are turned. Ahem.

Anyway, back to the trash. There has been a noticeable impact. Sure, people still throw crap on the ground. There are these candy wrappers, some kind of peanut butter chew or something, that appear daily. Then there are the random Schlitz Malt Liquor cans and McDonalds trash on Spring Road.

But by and large, I pick up less and less trash every day. Whereas I used to only concern myself with cans, bottles, and bags, now, there often aren't any of those. So I pick up smaller things, candy wrappers, sometimes cigarette butts, and even stuff in the street if street sweeping is not coming up soon.

N. thinks all this is hilarious and bought me a grabber-thingy called the Gopher 2 for picking up trash. This thing is awesome. Although I have been too embarassed to actually take it with me on the dog-walk and use it to collect trash yet, it has many other uses, including ass-grabbing, pet-teasing, and, for those who are not strong with The Force and may need such assistance, remote-control-gettting-while-reclined-on-couch.

So while my moonlighting as a garbage man is generally going well, there are three things that have appeared on my block lately that are somewhat baffling, and beyond the scope of my morning efforts.

1. The Television

Has now been on the sidewalk for about a month. Guess what? Nobody wants your 24 year old Goldstar television. That includes the trash men, a fact which should have been crystal clear after it remained on the sidewalk despite the trash cans being emptied, twice a week, for the last month.


2. The Post Base

This has been sitting on the sidewalk for a LONG time. The guy on the corner redid his fence sometime in the distant past, like early summer or even spring. It's been there ever since. Now, generally, I can't complain about that house because they are good neighbors, keep things up, and I even saw him mowing the treebox once. ONCE.

Obviously, though, there is not a female in that household. Because while all dudes are born with the ability to selectively ignore things like this indefinitely, and indeed even convince themselves that the object in question is actually not there, the opposite happens for women. When there is something within the boundaries of their living space that should not be there, or is in the wrong place, it starts glowing around the edges, then becomes bright white, and finally screams at them like a dying banshee every time they see it. Which they in turn do to you. This I learned while I was married. No woman would permit that post to remain on their sidewalk for months. Clearly, the guy who lives there needs a girlfriend, and possibly a pickup truck.


3. The Compost Pile/Rat Feeder

This is the most problematic of the three QWDDs (Questionable Waste Disposal Decisions). While the first two are annoying, I can (and perhaps will) take care of them myself either with a call to bulk pickup, or by throwing them in the back of my truck the next time I go to Fort Totten. But this one keeps recurring -- and, like that strange itch that you got after that drunken late-night hookup with "Marisa" or "Melisa" or whatever her name was, it's hard to get rid of without involving someone wearing a pair of rubber gloves.

Some person, or perhaps people, are dumping old food in the treeboxes. I suspect that they think they are feeding birds. I really do believe their motive is not absolute laziness since it's always old-looking food, often bread products. In the picture from this morning, it's moldy bagels. I picked them up. Someone saw me do it and thanked me.

But take a closer look at the television picture. That orange pile next to the TV is rice. That also appeared this morning. That's disgusting, and there's no way birds will eat it anyway. There has been rice in the past at the spot where I picked up the bagels. As well as a huge pile of bread, and sausages, and all sorts of crap. Someone either thinks that the treebox is some kind of miraculous garbage disposal, or that they really are doing a service to all the starving vermin in DC by dumping old food on the sidewalk.

Today was the first time I picked up the food pile (the bagels, I couldn't deal with the rice) because it's starting to happen more often. Maybe they will realize it's not cool when someone takes it every day. If not, then hopefully I will see them doing it and have have a frank discussion with them about rats and the purpose of trash cans and sewers. If that doesn't work, then that leaves me with only one alternative. No, I'm not talking about a stakeout with a camera, followed by public humiliation in the form of leaflets under the windshield of every car on the block.

I'm talking about the Real Genius punishment.