Nosy Neighbor (Bothell: credit, house, disposing) - Seattle area - Washington (WA) -Seattle and King County Suburbs - City-Data Forum

jenlion · 06-30-2008, 10:36 AM

I'm the nosy neighbor. I work from home and see what goes on up and down the street all day. (Obviously I'm very hard at work RIGHT NOW).

Last week a city truck came to a house across the street from me. They took their recycle and trash bins (but not their yard/food waste bin).

I'm wondering... what will they do with their trash? They have three teenage sons!

Sure enough, trash day is today, and the only bin up front is the yard waste / compost bin.

I doubt they are in so much trouble they can't afford trash service any more, especially since they have no trouble affording a ton of water to powerwash their driveway. So, I guess that they choose to let those bins go? I'm all for reducing your waste... but to forgo trash collection altogether? How? Could you really reduce your waste production to zero? You'd have to eat nothing but fresh fruits and veggies -- no bread (comes in a bag), no cans, no sugar or flour (bags)....

I know it's none of my beeswax, and if I never know what's up, that's fine too. But I've never seen someone voluntarily give up trash collection, so I'm quite curious. Anyone have any ideas what might be going on??

jwb123 · 06-30-2008, 10:46 AM

Sounds like they didn't pay their bill.

Ira500 · 06-30-2008, 11:18 AM

I had a similar experience...not saying what's happening with these folk, but what happened was:
We "downsized" to the mini can, and they told us to put our old bigger can for them to collect, which they did, and then didn't deliver the new minican for another few days, and when it was collection day, we didn't have a can to put out. They screwed up and credited part of our bill, but we weren't that ecogroovy that we didn't produce any garbage.

chris · 06-30-2008, 11:30 AM

trash can knomes are stealing their trash... Either that or they are protesting something.

jenlion · 06-30-2008, 12:39 PM

Ahh... Ira, that makes sense. Will be interesting to see if a new set of cans appears or not. Chris, the trash can gnomes are called crows... and they strew embarrassing trash up and down the street, rather than dispose of it altogether. Otherwise, I'd want trash can gnomes too!

They don't seem the protesting type. I'm told they are mormon. From what I can tell that's common around here.... I'm not aware of a mormons-as-protestors stereotype yet?!

Jenbar, I hope like heck you're wrong, but I am definitely concerned about that. You should be watching a ton of King of the Hill now. There's an episode where Lucky doesn't pay his bill so he puts all his trash in Hank's bin for a few weeks. Hank, of course, is furious, because there's no room for HIS trash. That could be us! I went for the minibin but it is just barely big enough (mostly because we are still gradually disposing of moving materials). I'm thinking, there is NO reason that a family of three should have more trash than that in a week, especially with the giant recycle bin available and the giant food-waste bin. But it's tough. If they start distributing trash to neighboring bins, we're in trouble. :-D

jwb123 · 06-30-2008, 12:58 PM

We had neighbors in Bothell who just kept the trash on the side of their house, and then loaded up their truck bed once a week and hauled it to the dump. No cans needed. Yeah, we loved that....