Program rollout a lesson
Residents have received an abject lesson in governmental overreach – albeit in a small scale – with the recent kerfuffle concerning the “Food Scraps to Energy” program, announced by the Rossi administration in late 2022. With the help of a $1.3 million grant, a pilot program was established wherein residents would separate their weekly trash into green and orange bags. The green bags are for food scraps such as peels, food bits, fruit cores, etc. The orange bags are for so-called “regular trash.”
A Southington-based company, Waste Zero, is charged with collecting the scraps and churning out biofuels. The goal is to eliminate the incineration or burial of the food scraps as we are told the state is undergoing a dearth of locations to send the refuse. Indeed, we are told this is the wave of the future, and the people of the city should “just do one more thing” to make life greener for the rest of us. That “one more thing,” of course, is to separate the refuse into different bags. It all sounds so reasonable.
Months ago, bags were passed out by the thousands to residents, and were asked to use them. However, as many residents who received the bags, just as many – or more – did not. Some determined they did not want to participate. It seemed they were well within their rights as the word “mandatory” was never used. It is a pilot program, a test of viability. Cooperation rather than coercion was requested. That was until some denizen of City Hall thought differently.
Just before Christmas, notices were pasted on people’s doors that “compliance” to the new program would begin. What? Compliance? It is not the law, what is this all about? People questioned. We questioned. Sure enough, orange stickers appeared on trash bins for people who had the effrontery to just use the trash bags they had purchased in their local stores, and chose not to separate out their trash. This was because they were unaware of the program, or chose not to participate – still an option according to the preprogram hype.
The orange stickers, again, the brainchild of some yahoo in City Hall, did not get the “compliance” that was hoped. Instead, the exercise angered many. When questioned about this Mayor Nancy Rossi claims of more than 900 phone calls and emails, only “one-half of one percent” were against the program. Really? Excuse us if we doubt Her Honor on this one.
At a recent City Council meeting, officials were directed to cease the posting of notices on non-compliant trash cans, which gives less credence to the claim of the public euphoria over the plan. We have not seen any new notifications thus far, but a supposed more tactful message is in the works.
The ham-handedness of the administration in rolling out this program is a lesson in the bureaucratic state. Instead of taking a more positive approach, City Hall made it look as if some ordinance had been broken, some law violated. Given a task, no matter how noble, a “rules for thee” approach was taken. Power can be a heady thing, and whoever came up with this gem, had it go straight to his head.
Mayor Rossi in her defense of the program also used the “just one more thing” argument. Putting trash in two different bags is “just one more thing” out of all the chores residents must do. Coupled with the non-compliance stickers, and the fact it seems every governmental program asks us to do “just one more thing,” some people are resentful.
The “Food Scraps to Energy” program is just another reality of modern life we are told. That may be true. But bringing that reality to the masses takes a bit more finesse than was shown in the roll out of this program.