A vision in orange: garbage tags create controversy

If you drive around Bloomington on trash day, you might see orange tags on every trash bag. But these tags come with a price -- $1 each.\nTrash pickup can be a real pain for some -- especially when you have to pay for it. But since 1993, every garbage bag Bloomington residents put on their curbs costs them $1.\nIn March 1990, then Governor Evan Bayh signed a bill into law to reduce Indiana's solid waste landfill disposal, according to the City of Bloomington's Web site. As a result, each county is required to reduce its solid waste by 35 percent in 1996 and by 50 percent in 2001.\n"The most important thing is you have control over your own trash," said Christina Fulton. Fulton is the Citizen Services Coordinator for the Bloomington Public Works Department.\nFulton said Bloomington implemented the garbage tag system in order to promote recycling. It also reduces the solid waste stream for the Monroe County landfill and increases its life, she said.\nTrash must be placed in a container or bag no larger than 32 gallons. It must weigh no more than 40 pounds and liquids must be drained.\nToni McClure, the Deputy Director of Public Works, said most people in Bloomington comply with the program.\n"Generally I think what we found is that when people don't comply, it's because of lack of knowledge about the rules, rather than thumbing their nose at the rules," she said.\nMcClure said while the housing and neighborhood development section does issue tickets to those who do not put tags on their garbage bags, they are also willing to work with the new crop of students that IU sees each year.\n"We generally don't issue tickets to students who aren't complying, we just tell them these are the rules," McClure said.\nMcClure added that the Public Works Department does a mailing campaign each August to educate everyone in rental properties about the program.\nBut some IU students don't want to comply with the rules. Junior Sean Lee lives with his brother and one of their friends. He said the rule is unfair.\n"I feel that the landlord should pay for trash pickup no matter where you live," he said emphatically.\nLee's landlord gives him and his two roommates a certain number of garbage tags for each month, but if the boys run out of them, they are responsible for buying more.\n"We split the cost of the tags, and basically whoever thinks of buying them first gets them," Lee said.\nLee and his roommates will sometimes use the tags, but they often attempt to get around the system by taking their trash to a dumpster at a business near their townhouse.\n"There is always a way around the system," he said.\nEmily Evans, a senior, lives off-campus in a house with three friends. She also thinks that the rule is unfair.\n"Why make people pay to have their trash taken?" she asked. "Instead, just tax that fee on something else and make us not get stickers. It's a pain."\nEvans and her roommates took their trash to a local apartment complex at the beginning of the school year, but now they just buy the tags.\n"Now we always just buy them because it's more of a pain to lug the garbage around the city," she said.\nMcClure thinks students and other members of the Bloomington community will eventually want to buy the tags. She said many other communities might not have such a program, and perhaps IU students just haven't been aware of it until now. But she said there is hope for IU students.\n"Students tend to be pretty good recyclers -- they're very responsible about it, very much wanting to recycle," she said. "I think that's partly because they've been raised that way, and partly a real desire to protect our environment."\nBloomington residents can buy garbage tags at a variety of stores in Bloomington, including Mr. D's, Kroger, Marsh and Bloomington Hardware. A complete list of stores can be found on the City of Bloomington's Sanitation Web site, www.city.bloomington.in.us/sanitation/trash.html.