DPW's Hazardous Waste and E-Cycling Drop-off Is Saturday, March 3

It's that time of the month: The Department of Public Works is reminding us that this Saturday at its Fort Totten Facility, you can get rid of your hazardous waste and documents to be shredded. Here are all the details:

DPW's monthly Household Hazardous Waste/E-Cycling/Personal Document Shredding drop-off is Saturday, March 3, between 8 am and 3 pm at the Ft. Totten Transfer Station. You can also find directions to Fort Totten on that web page.

District residents may bring toxic items, such as pesticides, batteries and cleaning fluids to Ft. Totten, along with computers, televisions and other unwanted electronic equipment. Personal document shredding also is available and residents may bring up to five boxes of materials to be shredded. No business or commercial material will be accepted.

To accommodate residents whose religious beliefs prohibit them from using the Saturday drop-off, DPW will accept household hazardous waste and e-cyclables the Thursday before the first Saturday of the month (March 1, from 1 pm to 5 pm). While DPW normally offers personal document shredding the first Saturday, they cannot accept items for shredding on Thursdays because these documents cannot be protected until the shredding contractor arrives the first Saturday.

For a list of all household hazardous waste and e-cyclables accepted by DPW, please click on the HHW link at www.dpw.dc.gov.

Presidents Day "Trash Slide" and Other Holiday Service Changes

We always welcome reminders from DPW about Service Suspensions and Changes for minor, sometimes forgettable holidays:

DPW To Observe Presidents Day

Monday, February 20: 

Sanitation And Parking Enforcement Services To Be Suspended

The DC Department of Public Works announced today how services will be affected Presidents Day, Monday, February 20, 2012, when the District observes the holiday. Trash and recycling collections and parking enforcement will be suspended. All services will resume Tuesday, February 21, 2012.

Trash/recycling collections: Trash and recycling collections in once-a-week collection neighborhoods will "slide" to the next day for the remainder of the week. In neighborhoods with twice-weekly trash collections, Monday and Thursday collections will be made Tuesday and Friday, and Tuesday and Friday collections will be made Wednesday and Saturday.

Fort Totten: Ft. Totten Transfer Station, located at 4900 John F. McCormack Road, NE, will be closed to the public February 20. It will reopen Tuesday, February 21. Residents may bring trash and bulk items between 1 pm and 5 pm. The next Saturday household hazardous waste/e-cycling/document shredding drop-off day is March 3, 8 am to 3 pm, (these services are available the first Saturday of the month, except holidays).

To accommodate residents whose religious beliefs prohibit them from using the Saturday drop-off, DPW is accepting only household hazardous waste and e-cyclables the Thursday before the first Saturday of the month (March 1, from 1 pm to 5 pm). DPW will not accept personal documents for shredding on Thursdays because they cannot be secured until the contractor arrives on Saturday.

Directions to Fort Totten: Travel east on Irving Street, NW, turn left on Michigan Avenue, turn left on John F. McCormack Road, NE and continue to the end of the street.

Parking Enforcement: DPW will suspend enforcement of parking meters, residential parking, and rush hour lane restrictions on Presidents Day. DPW also will suspend towing abandoned vehicles. Enforcement resumes Tuesday, February 21.

Trash and Recycling Pickup Slides This Week

Trash and recycling pickup slide a day this week because of the Presidents' Day holiday on Monday. So if your trash pickup is on Monday, then Tuesday is your new day, and so on down the week.

Here's a direct link to DPW's trash and recycling collection schedule: http://collectionday.dcgis.dc.gov.

And your dose of Presidents' Day trivia. Until 1971, Presidents' Day was Washington's birthday: February 22. Lincoln's birthday wasn't a legal holiday. In 1971 the  two birthdays were combined into a single Presidents Day.

Clean Team Pushes Recycling in Adams Morgan

For many years DC has had curbside recycling pickup, but if you're out in public, what do you do with your recyclable bottles and cans? If you happen to be in Unity Park in Adams Morgan, the answer is simple: Toss them in the recycling bins at the public park.

The Adams Morgan Partnership Business Improvement District (BID) and Adams Morgan ANC1C have teamed up to install not one but two new recycling cans at Unity Park, on Columbia Road, NW at Euclid and Champlain Streets. Look for the bright blue cans next to the standard black trash cans. Both of these cans were paid for and installed by the DC Department of Parks and Recreation.

The recycling bins will be maintained by the "Clean Team" of the Adams Morgan Partnership BID.  The Clean Team is comprised of four trainees and one supervisor working through a contract with the Gospel Rescue Mission located in Chinatown. The Clean Team works from 7am to 3pm, seven days a week including all holidays, collecting an average monthly total of 50,000 pounds of trash and cleaning up illegally placed posters, stickers, graffiti, etc. They also remove discarded furniture, broken glass, repair clogged drains, clean up leaves and fallen trees, water trees during the warm months, and report broken street lights and signage. The Clean Team is supported in part by a grant from the DC Department of Small and Local Business Development.

Additional recycling cans are scheduled to be placed along Columbia Road, NW in Adams Morgan in the coming year.

Still Life with Robin: Businesses I Wish Existed

by Peggy Robin

In a tough economy it’s hard to get a new business going, but sometimes an idea comes along that is so powerful, you think to yourself, “How could this fail?” Still, you need more than a good idea to make a business viable. Someone has to draw up a business plan, and scout for investors, and do all the legwork to create the product and market it. In other words, put years of work into it. I’m not the person to do that. I’m just someone who sits around talking with others (mainly my husband, Bill), saying things like, “Yes! That product is just what we need! If only someone would start a business to sell it, they’d make a fortune!” So, if you’re feeling entrepreneurial, here are three ideas for businesses that we’d love to see someone take the ball and run with.

1. The Smarter Smoke Detector. Fire safety experts tell us that you should have a smoke detector on every level of your house and you should change the batteries when needed. You know that smoke detectors save lives. But you also know the annoying reality that when a smoke detector is beeping “low batt” it’s always the middle of the night. So you stumble out of bed and begin to wander around the house, going from smoke detector to smoke detector, listening for that damned beep. Why are they set to beep just once every other minute? What idiot came up with that design? The needed improvements seem so obvious: Design a smoke detector that has a smarter “low batt” warning, set so that it won’t start the warning beep in the dark. It could work on a timer, so that it waits until the next daytime cycle to start beeping. (The “low batt” indicator comes on when there’s at least 24 hours of battery life left, so there’s no worry that they battery will die before the next daytime cycle.) Or you could link the low batt indicator to a light detector so that the beeping starts only in the presence of light. And while you’re at it, eliminate that minute-plus gap between beeps. There’s no reason why you should have to wait so long to hear the beep that lets you locate the one that's losing power. Just make it give a steady stream of pips. If I could buy a product with a smarter battery indicator, I’d scrap all my smoke detectors right now and replace each one, before their batteries had a chance to go “low batt” on me in the middle of the night!

Hold Your Thursday Trash Till Friday

Because Thursday is a Veteran's Day there's no trash or recycling pickup. Pickup slides a day on all Federal holidays. (Which isn't nearly as disruptive as when trash and recycling pickup slides a week after a snowpocaplypse.)  If your trash gets picked up on Thursday, put out your cans for a Friday pickup; if your day of trash is Friday, you'll see the recycling and trash trucks on Saturday.

While trash and reycling will not be picked up on Thursday, leaves will be picked up. So get those leaves ready so that we can wave 'bye to this year's leaf blower season.

Between Monday, November 8 and 20 (including Veterans Day), DPW will collect leaves from “Area A” neighborhoods as designated in the leaf collection brochure mailed to households. Area A residents should rake their leaves into their treebox spaces this weekend to be ready for their collection cycle. To view DPW’s trash and recycling holiday schedule for the remainder of the year, click here or call 311. You can use DPW’s web site to view the 2010-2011 leaf collection schedule by selecting Leaf Collection and clicking on Check Leaf Collection Status in Your Neighborhood and entering in your address.

Oh, and it's Free Parking on Thursday everywhere in DC.

Watch Out for Trash Thieves

From the Brookland listserv comes this intriguing account of a trash thief caught in the act. Although the trash-stealer quickly came up with a lofty-sounding motive, the more likely object of trash sifting is any unshredded paid bills or bank statements that can be used for identify theft.

This morning, a little past 8am, I looked outside towards the rear where the trash barrels are, and saw a man going through several stacked and tied-up trash bags that had been placed there for pickup this week. I noticed a white sports model car parked right outside the fenced-in yard, and yelled through the window at him "What are you doing?!" 

Your Recycling Bin Knows When You Don't Recycle...and Tattles on You

Pity the poor citizens of Cleveland, Ohio. They recycle. Like the good citizens of any city, some people in Cleveland are more enthusiastic recyclers than others. But soon in Cleveland recycling bins will be equipped with an RFID chip that monitors the bin's motion, and if it's not brought to the curb for a few weeks, the recycling can will automatically tell on you and call a city inspector.

What happens next is that a human stops by and plows through your trash can. If you trash can contains more than 10 percent recyclable stuff, you get a nice $100 fine.

Good Morning: Summer's Back

Iceland's Blue Lagoon

One day I'll write about the weather, "it was good while it lasted." But that day isn't today. It will get up to the mid-80's on Columbus Day, with hardly a cloud in the sky.

Oh, and since it's a holiday, trash and recycling pickup slide a day. So if your trash usually gets picked up on Monday, this week it's picked up on Tuesday, and so on down the line.

It is inevitable that something alien and unwelcome is going to come to the weather, and that something is called winter. Thoughts of Iceland's Blue Lagoon, a geothermal spa, become stronger when winter enter our collective consciousness. You may not need the Blue Lagoon (about a 45 minute drive from Reykjavik) this week, but save your frequent flyer miles for when winter approaches. The Blue Lagoon is an artificial creation, powered by a nearby geothermal plant. Maybe somebody can invent one for Washington, DC.

When Recycling Goes Too Far

Not everything should be recycled or reused.  You've got to wonder who's buying the "used" version that Amazon is advertising here.

If you have something that's just not right for recycling or the trash --that's um, hazardous waste-- get rid of it at DC's hazardous waste drop off center at Fort Totten. You can read more about how to get rid of hazardous waste, such as computers, batteries, chemicals and electronics here. The center is open on the first Saturday of each month (except for holidays) from 8am to 3pm.

Frito-Lay SunChips Recalled, But Not For the Usual Reason

This has to be the strangest recall in American history. And the history of the world. And for all time, too.

Frito-Lay SunChips have been recalled because they're too noisy. It's not the chips, actually, but the bag that's louder than you can possibly imagine. Frito-Lay tried to do the right thing by creating a completely biodegradable bag made of plant-based material. But who knew that plants could be so loud? I have a few house plants and they're the quietest things in my house. These bags are so loud, that Frito-Lay reports an 11 percent drop in the sale of SunChips. Yes, really. Watch this video and you'll see, um hear for yourself: