[Muncle]

There are obviously some advantages to using separate bins to put out your trash and recyclables as Pili and others have cited as well as disadvantages of bags. I'd like to address some of the disadvantages of bins.

a. Initial cost. Somebody has to pay for one or two bins for each unit in TV, depending on how trash is handled. That would be over 50,000-100,000 tubs (plastic?) that one way or another we, the residents, would pay for. If they are "provided free" by TV or the trash people, we'll still pay for them down the road.

b. Space. Today you have a trash can in your kitchen. Under the bin system, you're going to need to keep another container somewhere. I have ample room in my 2-car and golf cart garage, but a lot of people have the 1 1/2 car garage that is already filled with the car and cart and a ton of detritus.

c. Cleanliness. In the existing system, you put a tied bag on the curb at night. It rains and the wind blows (and it does blow hard here at times) but the sealed plastic bags keep the trash fairly protected. Occasionally a critter will tear open a bag, but not often at all. With bins, critters have a blast and possibly more critters appear. Florida winds come through and your loose trash is distributed evenly among your neighbors' yards.

d. Neighborhood appearance. In today's system, you put out a bag sometime before bed. Look down the street at night and there are bags at every driveway. Next morning, you awaken and all are gone. All is neat and clean. As we are a very mixed community, we've an awful lot of folks who drop in for weekends or short stays and take off for a time. Quite often, the last thing they do as they leave is to put out trash for pickup the next day or even occasionally 2 days later. With bins, they sit there until someone takes them back into the house. I know mine would be there at least until noon --- don't do mornings. For snowflakes and the like, the bins would stay on the curb until their next visit or they were blown away. Not conducive to a neat neighborhood.

There's good points about both systems, but a lot of things need to be considered.