Even the best ideas can have unintended consequences Coda • GREG BEAN :I've written before about the law of unintended consequences, that whole thing where a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, and that minor disturbance sets off a chain reaction that ultimately results in a tsunami in Borneo.
I saw a particularly interesting chain of unintended consequences during the last big recession, when the Wyoming town we were living in decided to go from twice-weekly garbage pickup to once a week in an effort to save money.
A number of New Jersey communities, including East Brunswick, are currently considering reducing the number of pickups per week, so an account of that experiment in fiscal frugality might provide some food for thought.
Here's what happened:
Our town was very windy, so instead of plastic garbage cans that can blow around, most folks used 55- gallon drums with the lids cut off. And for lids, they used old tires with quarter-inch steel in the middle. The cans were big and heavy, but they wouldn't blow around. Most families had two of them.
But when the town went to once-weekly pickups, people realized that two garbage cans weren't enough, so they went out and bought hundreds of plastic cans at the local hardware stores.
Which immediately started blowing down the streets, turning the thoroughfares into dangerous games of dodge 'em. They even mowed down a few pedestrians before people, and the police, started demanding a solution.
The solution? The town forked out to buy great big, heavy garbage containers for every family in town. You couldn't wheel the things around, so they parked them in people's front yards (very attractive). They were also too heavy for the sanitation guys to lift.
The solution for that problem?
The city had to buy a whole new fleet of garbage trucks, the kind with a winch on them strong enough to lift the new garbage cans.
A number of New Jersey communities, including East Brunswick, are currently considering reducing the number of pickups per week, so an account of that experiment in fiscal frugality might provide some food for thought.
Here's what happened:
Our town was very windy, so instead of plastic garbage cans that can blow around, most folks used 55- gallon drums with the lids cut off. And for lids, they used old tires with quarter-inch steel in the middle. The cans were big and heavy, but they wouldn't blow around. Most families had two of them.
But when the town went to once-weekly pickups, people realized that two garbage cans weren't enough, so they went out and bought hundreds of plastic cans at the local hardware stores.
Which immediately started blowing down the streets, turning the thoroughfares into dangerous games of dodge 'em. They even mowed down a few pedestrians before people, and the police, started demanding a solution.
The solution? The town forked out to buy great big, heavy garbage containers for every family in town. You couldn't wheel the things around, so they parked them in people's front yards (very attractive). They were also too heavy for the sanitation guys to lift.
The solution for that problem?
The city had to buy a whole new fleet of garbage trucks, the kind with a winch on them strong enough to lift the new garbage cans.
No comments:
Post a Comment