Town Oyster Bay Sanitation Calendar

These ideas to prevent car crashes won’t work, glass recycling solutions Suggested ideas to halt car crashes won’t work

Readers discussed reducing car crashes [“A few ideas to reduce crashes on roadways,” Letters, Sept. 17].

The first reader suggests “fake” police cars parked on highways to slow down traffic. Something similar was tried years ago. A real patrol car with a mannequin dressed as a deputy was positioned on the east end of the Long Island Expressway. It worked for a short time — until someone stole the mannequin.

Another reader suggests a device be installed in cars of convicted DWI drivers. That won’t always work, either. The driver can have someone else start the car, or the person can drive a different car.

A third reader wants more speed cameras. This also won’t work well because I see cars daily that have had their license plate numbers altered presumably to avoid red-light cameras from identifying the car. I also see many plates smeared with white film so any photo taken is a blur. Besides, the summons is issued to the car’s owner, making this just a money grab if the owner was not behind the wheel.

Back to the drawing board. 

— Anne Carboni, Manorville

I commute from Copiague to Garden City every day, and the roads are a free-for-all. I see no police cars anywhere. Not on the side streets, not on the Southern State “Parking Lot,” not on the Meadowbrook Parkway, not on Hempstead Turnpike.

Then I get to witness more bad driving daily at the Long Island Rail Road’s Copiague station, where multiple apartment dwellings have been built with no easy way to safely navigate onto or off the roads during rush hour. It’s scary driving every day. It’s like putting your life in someone else’s hands.— Deborah M. Connelli, Copiague

  

Jail time is not enough in DUI fatalities. I believe the death penalty should be sought. Current penalties are not enough, and we need to go further.

If we start executing individuals who take the lives of innocent people, maybe drivers will start getting this message: Drinking and driving, or being on drugs and driving, resulting in a fatality could cost you your life, too. Maybe impaired drivers then will decide not to get behind the wheel. — Jared Steiner, Hicksville

  

When we learn that a driver became intoxicated at a bar, leading to a road fatality, let’s enforce the server being held responsible.

— George Tamborello, Manorville

Glass recycling prompts solutions

So the problem with glass recycling is that mixing the plastics with the glass in a recycling bin results in the glass becomes economically unusable for most purposes because the glass gets dirty and broken glass interferes with the recycling of the plastics [“Glass ceiling,” Business, Sept. 17].

Here’s an idea: Each homeowner or business gets two recycling bins. One bin has “glass” written on it and the other “plastics.”To avoid double trips by the pickup vehicles, the items in the bins are picked up on alternate weeks. The same number of recyclables is picked up, but instead of a full bin of glass and plastics each week, a full bin of one or the other is picked up eachevery week.

I get a handy calendar from the Town of Oyster Bay that has all kinds of information, and the “glass” and “plastic” days could be added. The paper recycling can be picked up every week, as it is now.

— Frank Sterber, Farmingdale

The towns are missing a source of revenue — the lost deposits on beverage cans and bottles. It is time-consuming for consumers to reclaim deposits. It also can be frustrating for both consumers and vendors.

At the major local grocery where I shop, the recycling machines are often jammed or full. A customer then needs to go to the courtesy desk to get someone to stop what they’re doing and address the problem. Recently, at a local beverage store, the hours of returning recyclables were limited.

Why not have a town bin thereat grocery stores for deposit cans? The towns could crush the cans and claim the deposits by weight. Monies claimed could offset costs of recycling other items such as household trash, junk metal and cardboard.

— Gene Scanlon, Southampton

I was surprised to learn that there are few uses for recycled glass. In parts of Massachusetts (and presumably in some other states) that have drop-off sites for recyclables rather than curbside pickup, there are three bins for glass — clear, brown and green. Would there be more uses for recycled glass if we used a similar system?

For example, brown glass could be used to make beer bottles; clear, green bottles; and brown glass could be used for various brands of wine and liquor.

— Stanley Kalemaris, Melville

While I am not an expert in recycling, I do take it seriously because I care for the environment and want to preserve it for our community and future generations.

I would gladly separate my glass from plastics if I knew it were possible to have the glass repurposed. There are plenty of businesses that use glass — wineries, farm stands, etc. — on a regular basis, and I believe they should either participate in the cause or, as the article says, “be paying a tax to subsidize its reuse.”

And it should absolutely be a unified effort across Long Island. Divide the burden by multiplying the number of people and organizations coming together to resolve this problem.

— Michelle Kielbasa, AqueboGue

I look out my window at home and, every once in a while, I see garbage truck sanitation workers put both recycling and garbage into the same truck — not the usual split truck.

I go up to a dumpster near here, and a different company’s workers put an entire dumpster of recycling into their truck, then drive across and toss all the garbage into the same part of their truck.

Then I drive to another complex and — guess what? — they do the same thing. At another spot, paper recycling is at the curb alongside garbage, and those workers pick it all up and combine them in their truck.

Something must be done about recycling practices on Long Island. Many residents have cameras and could document and report all this. Either make some new laws or don’t tell us to rinse plastics — and waste precious water.

— Glenn Koebel, Roslyn Heights

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