Starting July 14th, Baltimore is changing it’s trash collection schedule to only service neighborhoods once a week city wide.  The new law, signed by Mayor Dixon last week, has a number of lofty goals, including the obvious potential to save the city up to $7 million annually, according to The Baltimore Sun.  But the Sun also lists the administrations other goals for the bill:  more time for sanitation workers to attend to trash-filled alleys, encouraging a reliance on recycling, etc.

But here’s the run-down: it’s easy for the administration to change a law like this with utopian ideals, and leave the bulk of the work on the citizenry.  But we can only do so much.  The frequency of recycling and what can be recycled has to increase, or no matter what, we’re going to have overflowing trash spilling out of the alleys between row houses.  And I can imagine that when the budget continues to be hampered by the economy, my guess is one of the first things that gets cut is the frequency of these supposed alleyway sweeps.

So I applaud any efforts to continue to save money, and both green and clean our city.  But let’s be realistic: sanitation is a responsibility of a modern city, and if we’re going to once-a-week pickups, it’s up to Dixon and her crew to keep up their end of the bargain.  Otherwise I’m going to start leaving my trash at 100 N Holiday and let the Mayor take care of it.