[speaker001:] uh around here we have a program where uh we we put out the the we separate the bottles and the cans and the plastic stuff from the newspapers and we keep the newspapers in a in a their collected twice a month and the trash and this this bottled stuff uh that uh is put in a in a little blue bin that's picked up and sorted out into a truck so they may actually actually have about three passes at this collection
[speaker002:] that sounds
[speaker001:] one for the regular trash one for the uh um you know bottles and cans and one for the newspapers
[speaker002:] but I gather you do not separate uh the bottles and cans
[speaker001:] no they they do that on the truck they separate them as they as they you know dump them and you know one guy comes around with his truck and and dumps it all in there
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and uh I think they're they're running out of uh you know the sanitary landfill I think uh is you know running out of course um you being from New Mexico you've probably been in to Washington especially if your your present location
[speaker002:] yes
[speaker001:] you must have come to Washington at least once
[speaker002:] yes I know not only have I come to Washington but um I find it very amusing that uh the thing that was just instituted here is very similar that is we also have blue bins we also separate newspapers from all of the other stuff which goes into the bin and gets separated in the truck and uh land fill space is indeed the driving factor here and in fact uh despite all of our open space out here land fill space is still um very hard to come by
[speaker001:] my you've got a lot a lot of nothing out there
[speaker002:] uh
[speaker001:] you know they got I mean there there's got to be a crevice between two mountains nobody gives a doggone about that you can you could use for landfill now
[speaker002:] ah but if somebody can make a regulation about it they will
[speaker001:] well what other uh well what uh what unique things you think uh that you can do about it in in what at Los Alamos uh other other than nuking it
[speaker002:] well um yes other than nuking it um in fact Los Alamos uh has uh done a fair amount of research uh in recycling things in general um it it involves for instance um creating biological organisms which can remove heavy elements like Selenium and barium and uh other things from uh waste material in general and um and purify the waste of specific uh uh nasty elements
[speaker001:] well isn't that uh that's uh that's pretty uh upscale uh trash uh uh situation I don't think anybody around here would understand all the all those exotic techniques you know getting rid of the heavy metals
[speaker002:] and the other thing that just was in the local news bulletin was somebody has uh made some special um polymers that have the ability to uh make certain Actinide elements adhere to them um uh they've uh looked at uh Plutonium and uranium and uh some other similar things to try to remove those from radio active waste
[speaker001:] hum
[speaker002:] and again this is driven by all of the documentation and uh E S and H uh uh considerations that uh people are uh worrying about I think much more than they should actually I've been involved in recycling for long before it became fashionable back when I was in graduate school I did all of the recycling of the um paper from the computer center and uh in fact I think I was the first person in our department to have my thesis published on recyclable paper recycled paper
[speaker001:] hum well that certainly uh you know uh getting into the swim of things I I think it should be it it should go to the to the heart of the matter though and say okay guy you you everybody gets you know five pounds of garbage that they can throw away you know uh but more than that every week uh you've got to pay by the pound
[speaker002:] I think that's a wonderful idea
[speaker001:] I I I I think I think people would be would get very very you know they'd be very careful about how they bought stuff
[speaker002:] the only alternative I would see is uh and this would actually be a little more workable since weighing everybody's garbage would be a real pain uh if you did it by volume rather than by weight it would uh speak more directly to the space need than the land fill
[speaker001:] um-hum yeah
[speaker002:] and it would also cause people to compact their garbage more uh and uh and limiting the volume is probably a little bit closer to the real problem than limiting the weight
[speaker001:] um-hum well of course that uh you know those big trucks can can probably are far more efficient in packing than any kind of little household compactor