maybe he should have just thrown it into the street like everyone else does? sheesh!

Actually, its understandable. He threw away house hold trash in a public can rather than in his home trash where he has to pay for it. We have this problem at work, where the neighbor hood people come to our large dumpster to get rid of their trash rather than paying to have it picked up. I agree with the fine, as we pay by the ton to have our trash removed, and should not pay for someone who does not live in our complex.

Edited by - Finalday on 3/10/2006 2:44:19 AM

what? you have to pay for domestic rubbish removal? how does that work?

Our Apartment residents pay $10 a month for trash removeal. A house usually pays about $15 a month to have trash picked up, usually 2 times a week. But they get too cheap and dump their trash else where. In the US, this is rather common.

well effs we pay too (or your mum and dad do i should say) through domestic rates, or council tax now, whatever its called. What's winding me up at the moment is that AGAIN the bl**dy council tax has risen far beyond the rate of inflation but the bin collections are being reduced to once a fortnight. And the council say that we're supposed tor recycle more and take it to the recycling depots ourselves. fine, but why should i pay more just to do the council's work myself? <fume>

Hm... Final, if that's the case, then what are public litter bins for? Presumably to put litter in . He pays tax too, thus shouldn't he be entitled to use public bins?

Besides, it's just a couple of pieces of paper. Hardly life-threatening.

NYC - same situation as Fd describes.

The public trash cans (bins) are there for people to use to avoid littering while they go about their daily rounds away from home. Chewing gum, candy wrappers, newspapers, fastfood wrappers, etc. Not the garbage that a resident accumulates at home. All residential buildings have City waste removal contracts but some landlords require their tenants to keep their garbage in their home until collection day and all commercial buildings are required to pay for either City or private waste removal. If these rules are not enforced, the trash cans on the street corners would become mountains of garbage.

don't you just throw it out of your apartment window onto the poor people below?

That sort of went out of style with modern plumbing when chamber pot emptying became unnecessary. *sniff*

@Indy; What if I staart to chew the gum when I am at home and decide to discard it before embarking on a train? Can I use the bin at the station or do I have to go home first?

In fairness I do understand the rule here but disagree with its implementation in this case. Someone who wished to avoid bin taxes and dumped in public bins, on a large scale or at least with an entire sack of rubbish, is certainly worth sending the fine to. Either The rule obviously does not have a minimum amount of waste required before it has to be employed or, on issuing the fine the council most likely found the evidence in a general public tip and could not have known that it was one isolated item instead of a loose scrap from a larger dumping offence.

what if you open the train window on a hot day and the force of the wind whips the gum out of your mouth?

OR

what if freak weather conditions catch a load of litter from a landfill site and dump it randomly in a city on top of an official dumpster?

and don't all those bits of buildings that drop out of the sky in Noo dworkia class as litter?

Well, if the train car window is open and the chewing gum is sucked out of your mouth by sheer force of the venturi vortex effect, it wouldn't be littering, nor would it be expectorating, leastwise not intentionally, so were I the garbage warden, I would rule against fining. Although I would wonder exactly how slack jawed the accused may be in real life.

Hmmmm. Things falling from the sky. Well, we do have an annoying population of rock pigeons and what they drop, no human should be forced to experience. But they are merely "natural" excremental experiences so they don't count. The flying litter thing ... good question. I believe our City fathers have avoided this issue by shipping our waste out to other places so that such eventualityy does not occur. As for falling bits of buildings ... well, usually, those things end up as forensic evidence in as much as the pedestrians below don't take kindly to being maimed or killed and our litigation happy society slaps law suits on people pretty much in willy nilly fashion.

On the other hand, if one decided to start a gum chew before exiting the house well knowing that he would be finished with the chewing before returning home, I would question the intent, the scienter as it were of that gum chewer. Does it not imply that he had an intent of making use of the public garbage receptacle system for something that deservedly should have been disposed of at home? Is this not abuse subject to fining?

Practically speaking, the occasional abuser isn't meant to be caught but do understand that in a City like New York where there is a considerably high density of residents, what one gets away with "on occasion" quickly becomes what everyone does very regularly because "he" got away with it. So, yes, our sanitation department is rather militant about public garbage can abusers.

When they go on strike, you should see how quickly everything piles up. It is, to say the least, sinus numbing.




Edited by - Indy11 on 3/10/2006 10:03:36 AM

@TET, If I'm walking down the street an sipping on a soda, the public bins are the place to discard it. Just not to bring house hold items, as this guy did and dispose of them there.

@Taw: Of course if one were to continue the logic then if I were to be living in Noo Dworkia and, as a nice clean citizen, I picked up some litter found on the street in front of my home and deposit it in my household bin then I would be cited for theft of public property.