[speaker001:] okay Jim um what are they doing down in your uh neck of the woods for recycling
[speaker002:] we have recently the city of Plano has started a a situation it's pretty much volunteer as far as separating oh paper and bottles and you know cans and that sort of thing
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] and uh it's not exactly curbside yet they've got these little igloo like things sitting up in various parts of town where you can take that stuff in if you want to the biggest thing that they've done is uh for forever we had been on the plastic trash bag business where everything was just uh put in uh plastic bags then set out in the alley but uh they came through with these big green uh plastic dumpster kind of things uh where you put everything except lawn trash and then they they we got these uh paper sacks to put uh lawn debris and stuff in supposedly uh you know it can all be mulched at once the paper sack and everything only problem is you can't get anything in the paper sack
[speaker001:] oh that's they're they're too small
[speaker002:] yeah they're too small on the top and they're they're smaller than most grass catchers and that sort of thing so they just started this uh oh maybe a month or two ago and uh they uh the local folks you know they're just starting to use them now that the grass is starting to you know be cut and everything we're getting a lot of complaints about them but
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] uh you know I I realize the whole the whole recycling trash thing is a is such a problem because the landfill and all that uh
[speaker001:] yeah that's true right um
[speaker002:] I don't know what are they they're probably doing more than that up there I'm I guess you all started this sort of thing long time before we did
[speaker001:] yeah well up Massachusetts I I live in Rhode Island
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and you know I travel back and forth which isn't too far it's only I only live about uh about eight miles from the plant
[speaker002:] oh
[speaker001:] so I live right up in the uh in the northeast corner of Rhode Island and and the plant is is in uh is in the like the south uh southwest section of Massachusetts it comes down like kind of a neck so
[speaker002:] hum yeah
[speaker001:] I don't have for to travel but I live in a rural community and last year we started recycling they made it mandatory in in our town
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and they gave you uh uh little blue containers that you put all your your uh your bottles and cans and like the plastic milk jugs
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] you put those in there and they recycle those and then you put your newspapers in a separate or either you put them in a a paper bag or or you tie them up with string you put those in a separate bundle and they have a special truck that comes around and they pick them up curbside
[speaker002:] um um-hum
[speaker001:] and then the rest of it is just you know goes to the landfill I guess or whatever they whatever they incinerate it maybe
[speaker002:] yeah we uh we're coming to that here you know in the metroplex is getting big enough that um it'll happen I I grew up in a uh kind of a a rural area of of west Texas and New Mexico where that just wasn't a problem matter of fact till recently we burned trash you know we had the big barrels out in in the alley
[speaker001:] oh yeah yeah
[speaker002:] and when it's filled up you just put a match to it and burned it well course that's that's almost unheard of anymore
[speaker001:] and that's right that's what we used to do too years ago we used to do the same thing
[speaker002:] yeah yeah yeah we used to burn leaves and burn grass you know and all that as far as what to uh to do to encourage recycling I guess a lot of states I have noticed on uh on Coke bottles and and whatnot we went I've got some relatives in Iowa and uh there's a big thing up there what is it nickel for every bottle or some such thing and you know people
[speaker001:] yep yeah we do the same yeah
[speaker002:] people actively go out and and uh seek them you know I guess that's one way of doing it you know is to make it worthwhile
[speaker001:] yeah all the states around us Connecticut uh Massachusetts New Hampshire I think Vermont and Maine do it Rhode Island's the only state that doesn't put a nickel deposit on the bottles
[speaker002:] um
[speaker001:] but every other state does so you don't you don't see any trash along the sides of the roads people that throw bottles away there's other people that come along with plastic bags and they pick them up and and I guess they can make of a you know it's like working a part-time job
[speaker002:] um-hum yeah
[speaker001:] uh it's all free just takes time and if you're retired and have nothing to do um
[speaker002:] well course there's uh people will go after aluminum cans and stuff down here because it's just uh there's not a per can value on them but there is a
[speaker001:] oh just on the metal content
[speaker002:] just in the metal recycling itself I've
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] I I'm not sure what it's what a can is worth now it's couple cents you know you've got to get quite a few of them to really make it worthwhile but
[speaker001:] yeah to make it worth it yeah
[speaker002:] it turns out that uh on a a Sunday morning after a Dallas Saturday night there's enough aluminum cans and stuff along the road to make it worthwhile yeah
[speaker001:] yeah uh my wife and I both graduated from the University of Rhode Island their uh master gardener program
[speaker002:] um-hum um-hum
[speaker001:] I guess every state has has uh uh a land grant college uh would used to be Brown University now it's uh University of Rhode Island
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and what we learned down there is that uh fifty percent when you when you mow your lawn fifty percent of all the nutrients are in that top section of the grass and most people kind of rake it up or they catch it in the grass catcher and they throw it away
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] if you if you mow properly and just let it lay in there you refertilize your own soil besides building up a base
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] so that's what we've been doing that for the last couple of years and you don't have to worry about uh fertilizing which causes a lot of thatch and all that kind of stuff so there's more and more people too are aware of that up here
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and they're not going out for chemicals they're not going out for a lot of fertilizers and stuff so they're letting it you know uh
[speaker002:] our soil situation down here in this particular area we're in a real hard black gooey gummy awful black clay situation
[speaker001:] oh so
[speaker002:] and uh
[speaker001:] summertimes it cracks when it heats when it gets
[speaker002:] oh yeah you could lose a small dog in the cracks sometimes
[speaker001:] oh yeah
[speaker002:] uh so I
[speaker001:] I was watching uh I was watching the news this morning uh national news and they were talking about uh I guess they got a a recycling dump for tires that caught on fire
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] but they were saying that uh California they recycle their their all the tires and make like a a some kind of a rubberized compound and they incorporate that with uh with uh tar and they use it on their roads and they say the roads last a lot longer
[speaker002:] um-hum yeah there was a thing in the local news here yesterday there's a little town down south of Fort Worth called Mansfield and there's some tire recycling outfit wants a permit down there they say out of every tire you can get a gallon what amounts to a ga llon of diesel fuel and like you say several pounds of this uh carbon black and uh material for for making roads and anymore there's a couple pounds of stainless steel in most of the uh the tires yeah because the steel belted tires and uh
[speaker001:] oh for the steel belted that's right I didn't think about yeah
[speaker002:] it's a totally gas fired operation they say there's no exhaust whatsoever you know most people think of tire yeah tho se burning tire uh see there was what was it Massachusetts I remember here a couple of years ago reading about one that had been on fire for long period of time you know it just smolders and the black smoke pours out of it
[speaker001:] yeah yeah there could be the one up here some place I'm not really sure um
[speaker002:] yeah over in Fort Worth they had one catch fire here a couple of years ago and they had an awful time putting it out but our big problem down here course is uh tires laying around down on the ground and stuff uh collect water and then of course that becomes mosquito breeding area and uh
[speaker001:] yeah oh that's right too yeah I didn't think of yeah
[speaker002:] that can be a real
[speaker001:] yeah Connecticut was uh is in the process of building a a plant to burn tires to generate electricity
[speaker002:] um yeah
[speaker001:] so I guess that's kind of of a a recycling process
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] the uh all the all the communities in Rhode Island eventually are going to go on this like the recycling that we have now it depends on on each individual municipality uh we went on it quite early because of the town fathers said yeah you know we think it's a good idea but the state I think by nineteen ninety three every every town in the state has to go on this recycling program so it's like a forced
[speaker002:] um-hum yeah
[speaker001:] um which is good I think
[speaker002:] yeah what happens to us anyways as you can imagine in Texas you've got urban areas that are probably as compact or as you know densely populated as just about any place in the country but then
[speaker001:] yeah well you guys got
[speaker002:] then you run into uh areas you know they've we've got a statistic down here that they like to use you know you can take the population of the world and pack it in the state of Texas about the density of Houston and then you'd have the rest of the world to grow crops in because there wouldn't be any people in it
[speaker001:] yeah Houston's probably as big as this whole state of Rhode Island
[speaker002:] uh yeah uh the panhandle the the there's well there's several counties in west Texas and New Mexico too for that matter that are bigger than Rhode Island but uh
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] we had a our our government rep I'm in DSEG here