Waste_Inbox

On A Roll: An Aussie in San Diego has hit on what sounds like a potentially prosperous commercial idea: high-pressure cleaning of residential trash bins.

According to an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, keeping stinky bins fresh is big business in Australia and has been for years. So Warren Bishop, a self-described "serial entrepreneur" who hails from that country, decided to try the idea here. It seems to be working well. Without any competition (yet), Bishop has quickly built his company, Scrubbish Wheelie Bin Cleaning & Sanitizing, to 150 customers and counting. Stay tuned.

Slow Delivery: In an effort to move its image out of the ecological Stone Age, the U.S. Postal Service is stepping up its green efforts by adding more recycling bins in post office lobbies to encourage customers to recycle unwanted mail instead of trashing it.

According to a report in USA Today, the number of post offices having recycling bins will increase from 5,629 to 8,064, and that latest figure represents an increase of 150% since the Postal Service launched its lobby recycling program in 2005.

Of course, the story also notes that the Postal Service operates 27,161 post offices in total, so ...

How does the old saying go -- something about learning to crawl before you can walk through snow, rain, sleet and gloom of night?

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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