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  Acknowledged City of Berkeley (Verified Official)

  Your request to Berkeley 311 has been accepted. Your service request ID is #121000938326.

  06/28/2022 · Flag Flagged
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  Closed City of Berkeley (Verified Official)

  closed

  06/30/2022 · Flag Flagged
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  Reopened Starchild (Registered User)

  Whoever places "illegal dumping" complaints about perfectly usable furniture like this couch being left out for reuse by other members of the community, please consider the harm that not allowing it to find a new home without government interference does to the public and the throwaway model it perpetuates.

  In the best case scenario, usable items are diverted from the landfill by an exclusive sweetheart-deal contractor that gets paid up to $114K for three years to take their pick of the most valuable items, which they then turn around and sell to the public. After the public pays to have it picked up off the streets, and then pays again to send everything Urban Ore doesn't take, to the landfill.

  https://www.epa.gov/transforming-waste-tool/zero-waste-case-study-berkeley

  And the above link is an EPA article trying to hold this program up as a role model. One can be sure that in reality it doesn't operate in as efficiently or corruption-free as the article might lead one to believe!

  Also, is that a bus stop sign at the rear of the photo? Hard to tell, but if so, as at many city bus stops there's no place to sit while waiting for the bus. Maybe someone left the couch there as a public service for that purpose?

  07/01/2022 · Flag Flagged
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  Acknowledged City of Berkeley (Verified Official)

  Your request to Berkeley 311 has been accepted. Your service request ID is #121000358541.

  07/01/2022 · Flag Flagged
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  Starchild (Registered User)

  Recognize that whatatever you report to have picked up at taxpayer expense and taken to the Transfer Center will most likely end up in the landfill. Trying to make your neighborhood look pristine, and simultaneously denying poorer residents the opportunity to find free items they can use on the street instead of having to go buy them somewhere else, means filling that landfill more rapidly.

  While the exclusive contractor Urban Ore reportedly saved over 800 tons of material in a recent year, that's out of 147,000 tons of material the center processes in a typical year – in other words, a drop in the bucket:

  https://www.berkeleyside.org/2018/11/27/berkeley-looks-to-overhaul-its-waste-facility-with-future-needs-in-mind

  07/01/2022 · Flag Flagged

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