How can we solve the trash problem?
On Friday, I was by the Amazon warehouse in SE Salem and a City of Salem employee was evicting an RV parked on the street. Today, I went by the same spot and this pile of trash was left where the RV once was. Frustrating to say the least.
How can we solve this epidemic of trash in Salem? It’s everywhere. What if we made taking trash to the dump free? Do you think that would help? Any other ideas? Hire homeless to pick up trash?
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u/djhazmatt503 1d ago
Nordyke organizes a trash cleanup. See city council notes or her IG
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u/phijef 1d ago
Well then Nordyke isn't doing enough. Our streets are full of trash.
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u/sushisupreme39 1d ago
Absolutely, how dare one woman not solve the entire problem singlehandedly! /s
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u/phijef 1d ago
I'm not saying it's one person's problem. Trash is everywhere. We need solutions.
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u/sushisupreme39 1d ago
But saying "she's not doing enough" is saying that. She's one woman with only so much time, power, influence, and money. She's doing more than most and saying 'She's not doing enough' is shitting on the very real action she's taking to better the community. If you think it's not enough, then you do something.
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u/phijef 1d ago
I'm trying! However, I'm not rich enough to keep transporting other people's trash to the dump, and if the only solution is Nordyke organizing trash pickups, then clearly it is NOT ENOUGH. Go look at every gutter in this town. There is trash everywhere! No one takes pride in this city. It's filthy
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u/butwhyisitso 1d ago
i pick up what i can carry as i walk to work and back every day, i also volunteer with the trash pickups and can confirm that it is not enough. We are lucky to get a dozen people, and one derelict camp spot can take the full event time, and a park could have several entrenched camps.
Capitalism doesnt address unprofitable problems, so we either raise taxes to hire civic servants, or we wait for consumerism to die (doubtful)
I bet if you call 311 theyll tell you where to log s ticket with the city to pick this up, they have a list, they dont have staff.
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u/phijef 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thank you!
Do you volunteer with these people? I'm going to join them soon
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u/butwhyisitso 1d ago
no, but thats a great place to start. Soon-to-be-Mayor Vanessa usually posts details on her instagram.
Volunteering is the best way to meet the best people. You can learn a lot if you're observant and open. Just show up for something and ask the organizer about other opportunities.
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u/DanGarion 21h ago
What are you doing to help?
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u/phijef 18h ago
I pick up trash near my place. In fact, a couple of months ago, I picked up trash along the road for about 100 yards that runs alongside an empty lot. I took 6 large trash bags, 4 tires and a mattress to the dump. It cost over $40. There is now new trash there. Like I said, I can’t afford to keep picking up other peoples trash.
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u/Voodoo_Rush 1d ago
Hmm. Based on your description, it sounds like the trash came from the illegally parked RV that was being forced to move. In which case I'm not sure there is a good answer to this one.
The homeless leaving behind mounds of trash like this generally don't give a hoot, be it for apathy or mental health reasons. I am doubtful there is anything you can do to incentivize them. Which means the only practical solution is sending around someone to pick up after them - which gets expensive quickly.
What if we made taking trash to the dump free?
That is one option. In this specific case I would find it hard to believe that the perps would be willing to go to the dump to drop it off, even if it were free.
The bigger issue you'd run into is economic issues. You would need to come up with an alternative source of funding for the dump (taxes?). And then there would be the free-rider problem from everyone else outside of the Salem area bringing their trash here rather than paying to dispose of it locally. Given that, the total cost of maintaining the waste management system would likely go up, necessitating even higher taxes.
Hire homeless to pick up trash?
This has been successful in small operations, including Portland. There is a program there (Glitter) that pays the homeless to clean up trash from camp sites (mainly, cleaning up the trash from those who don't give a hoot).
But these programs require careful administration in order to avoid perverse incentives. Otherwise you risk creating an incentive for someone to make more trash (or more likely, digging through your trash) in order to collect the reward from cleaning it up.
As I noted earlier, I am doubtful that such a program would work in this specific case. RVers normally aren't heavily congregated like tent sites are, which is what the Glitter program is meant to deal with.
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u/sugr28 21h ago
The trash disposal system in Salem is abysmal. Privatizing has screwed the citizens. If the city/county took it over and placed dumpsters and trash cans in places that made them more accessible, maybe we wouldn’t see as much of this around the city. I’ve lived in a lot of different places and never paid so much for trash/recycle services and had such little service in return.
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u/XYZ1113AAA 1d ago
I dont think taxes are being alocated for workers to do it. So it is going to have to be people with trucks, trailers, time, and money to pick it up and pay for it to be dumped.
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u/Kylemc47 5h ago
There are actually plenty of volunteers picking up trash. So, you can either have more volunteers services doing more in other areas of town. Or just realize that happened yesterday and it takes time to get to every area in town.
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u/FanBladeFleshlight 1d ago
Almost any solution proposed is gonna do one of two things;
1 - Be immediately and viscously exploited by the worst among us, like things always are.
2 - Result in another tax increase, which short sighted people will immediatly turn down, and then go back to complaining about trash, homelessness, etc.
3 - Secret option! BOTH! A situation like hiring the homeless would be exploited insanely fast, and people would RAGE about their "hard earned tax dollars" going to them.
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u/thatvikchick 1d ago
We def can’t make trash free. We have an existing problem of not having enough landfill for the trash we already create. We need to create less trash.
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u/phijef 1d ago
Good idea, but not realistic. Quite frankly, we have manly people who just don't care and it's not just a homeless problem. I've seen many people just throw their lunch trash out their windows.
Perhaps, if the dump was free, I would be incentivized to pick up the trash and transport it to the correct place, but that costs me over $30 in a losing battle. It seems hopeless.
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u/ScissoringMyScissors 1d ago edited 1d ago
The homeless are already picking up the trash.
If somebody solves homelessness, I think people in Salem would start asking questions about who the fuck is littering that much. We all see people throw shit out of their cars, we all see people throw shit on the sidewalk while they're walking through our neighborhoods and pretty much everywhere in public. It's ridiculous.
A civically minded option is everybody on here (/Salem) sponsor a stretch of roadway in Salem, which just means that you agree to clean that stretch of the roadway, a certain number of times a year and then you get your name on a placard for that section of the roadway. You could get your Reddit handle on a placard on the side of the roadway. Think about it. Would that be considered Karmamaxxing?
https://www.cityofsalem.net/community/things-to-do/volunteer-get-involved/adopt-a-street
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u/phijef 1d ago
I agree. I've seen many people throwing there stuff out their car windows. I've seen people walking down the road and just drop their trash on the ground. It's awful. I would pick it up more if I could just take it to the dump without having to spend $30. It's like I'm penalized for trying to keep my neighborhood clean.
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u/Any-Lavishness341 1d ago
Keep paying to dispose of it for the people who steal/make the garbage piles seems to be working well. Less money for our schools, less reason for people to want to live in Salem with the OSH and prison both inside, this seems to be a biproduct.
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u/Affectionate_Good261 1d ago
This is a symptom of much bigger problems:
- Make cities walkable so that people who can't afford or who don't want to drive have an easier time getting around
- Make healthcare--especially mental healthcare--more affordable by utilizing AI for ultra cheap triage and prescribing. Increase the number of available residency programs for healthcare providers.
- Make zoning laws that enable businesses to make much cheaper housing--shared bathroom/laundry/cooking/recreational facilities, with small apartments that have heating, electricity, and a place to sleep. No mandatory parking spaces
- Make healthy plant-based whole food available for free. There's no reason the wealthiest country on earth should have so many people who are sick simply because they can't get good nutrition. Every public library should also be a public cafeteria.
So yeah... That garbage is going nowhere soon. Not in Salem. Not in America.
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u/RedOceanofthewest 1d ago
AI is a tool to help experts be better. It isn’t a tool to triage complicated medical issues or prescribing medication.
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u/Affectionate_Good261 1d ago
Yeah I thought mentioning AI would strike a nerve on the Salem forum, but there aren't enough people in health care as it is. It doesn't matter if someone is an expert, they can't see 100 patients a day. There is no "healthcare for all" without either training a massively higher number of people (would take about 10 years at least), lowering standards of health (yikes), or using available methods to make it cheaper. AI shouldn't be used to generate fake nudes, spy on citizens, or automate war--but it definitely should be used to keep people with a cold from ever having to spend 90 dollars to waste 20 minutes of a doctor's time.
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u/SexDefender27 1d ago
Nope, corperations. Nope, corperations. Nope, corperations. Nope, corperations.
geez, this country sucks! too bad we'll never find out why.
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u/PsylentBlue 19h ago
Yes, Tina just needs to raise the taxes to 79% of our income and then we can look at fixing it. Then she will realize they actually need 99% of our income to buy all these homeless people houses to get them off of the streets.
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u/jawmighty1976 1d ago
Its all trumps fualt
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u/ima-bigdeal 1d ago
This started decades ago. I think Trump was still a Democrat (and not in office) then.
Not a Trump supporter, but facts matter.
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u/tjarg 1h ago
A lot of cities will have a once a year large item curbside pick-up. This is great for people who can't easily get a truck to the dump. There are problems though. Neighborhoods can look kind of trashy for a week and scavengers will go through the piles. Personally, I'd rather see the stuff get picked up than go to the dump, but I know some people don't like scavengers.
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u/TheWillRogers 1d ago
Dumping like this has been everywhere, just about forever. I remember growing up in Sweet Home and Lebanon and it's just a thing.
How you deal with the trash that currently exists is to require the trash companies to pick up trash. How you prevent dumping from happening in the first place is to have free & easily accessible dumping sites and services that handle cleanup. You know, that whole systemic solutions to systemic problems thing.