jeddawson

> Privileging the priorities of my private repos over their public dependencies would be shortsighted

I think that’s Github’s call, but I definitely don’t disagree with you and apologize that I came off that way. Open source projects exposed me to Github and greatly benefit the projects I work on in private repos. I really do want those projects to have an effective platform for growth and stability. I don’t want to water down their needs; I just wanted to offer some balance to the discussion.

My point was simply that this probably isn’t something that is as easy for Github to solve as it may appear on the surface. Any changes they make to the issues system can’t upset the low friction way it works for repos with a modest amount of contributors (and +1’s from clients are appreciated). I hope that positive changes come out of this letter.

If Github were to leave Open Source projects high and dry, they’d lose my business.

Ditto. Maybe 98%. I think that's a big part of the disconnect I'm seeing here in the comments. Those of us that live in private repos are likely pretty happy with how things currently work especially since we're the ones paying to use the service. If it wasn't working well for our teams, we'd find somewhere else to spend our money. That being said, we're certainly the minority when it comes to users on the platform.

Their broadcast method rate limits you to 1 message every 500ms. It also looks like they're actively changing it to cut every message to 500 chars now too.

Some kind of infinite backoff based on how quickly you're trying to send messages would probably slow the spam down and make room for human pace messaging to occur.

They do seasonal yard waste collection separately from the primary waste stream. When I last visited they only did a small amount of food waste collection since their new processing plant (digester) hasn't been built. Food waste adds in health and odor concerns so they need to build the digester before really expanding that program.

Throughout CA and across the US it is very common to offer a separate service for solid waste and organic waste. Certain areas/haulers have been collecting and processing food waste for decades, but the vast majority aren't yet.

I completely agree about the need to update the health code to allow for more efficient resource management. A minor change could dramatically impact the annual resource consumption of the hauling industry.

Also, YES!! hybrid garbage trucks are certainly on the horizon and will have massive positive impact. Waste Management (wm.com) was working on them at one point around 10 years ago. Now there are several companies working on them.

Related to this, I'm working on software that increases the efficiency/density of collection routes as customers subscribe. I feel that the vast majority of waste haulers have allowed their routes to become inefficient and through applying a layer of software/logic at the subscription point we can help them be more profitable and more efficient.

I work in the industry (my family runs a collection operation and I focus my effort on software for waste haulers) and I’ve seen huge variance throughout the country in how this is handled. As mentioned earlier, some locations operate a dirty MRF (everything is mixed and the recyclables are sorted out) to centralize the process but the issue you run into is how low quality the majority of the materials are once they are separated. Waste generators in this “system” aren’t consciously putting effort into the way recyclable material is handled so you end up of with a high percentage of residual (not recyclable) that gets landfilled.

Here in CA, South Tahoe Refuse (STR) uses a modified process that I think solves a lot of that problem. They give their customers durable semi-transparent blue bags to fill with recyclable materials. This is somewhat ceremonial but does certainly aid in the sorting efficiency. The waste generator then places those bags in with the regular garbage and one truck collects it all. At the STR operated MRF, they mechanically separate the blue bags and break them open. The resulting recycling is then hand sorted. From what I’ve seen at their MRF, the diverted material is of much higher quality than materials I’ve seen at “regular” dirty MRFs.

I’d personally love to see waste collection return to single container/vehicle or some less impactful method. The current regulations in CA essentially require most locations to run 3 vehicles that collect from 3 different containers at each residence/business since you have to hit a certain level of diversion (keeping materials out of the landfill) that is hard to attain at a dirty MRF. Add to that the CA health code requirements for weekly collection and you can’t just “alternate” collection. The additional fuel consumption, road wear, and other resource demands that result from this multiplication of equipment & travel would be super interesting to research and document. Figuring out a good solution that would allow you to centralize sorting and hit high diversion percentages would result in less pollution/resource demands and potentially lower rates for the waste generators.

Also, now everyone else is experiencing my inverse experience to every “garbage collection” article on HN. I’d love to see more innovation, thought, and exploration around the problem of physically collecting garbage and I love when it’s discussed here on HN.

Are you going to support routing rules like preferring right hand turns? If so, we should talk.

I’ve having a hard time figuring out how this is actually going to be any different than the existing “brokerage” services that are common in the solid waste industry. I really hope I’m wrong because this industry is ready for an operational overhaul and I would love someone from Rubicon to jump in here and point out where they are different.

Waste Management purchased one of the largest solid waste brokers in the nation (OakLeaf) in 2011 [1] and through that acquisition now brokers sold waste and recycling collection services to smaller collection companies across the nation. Large national brands like those mentioned sub out the management of collection contracts for their individual location’s waste services to Waste Management’s brokerage division. This sounds just like the business model described for Rubicon.

One of their primary claims that I’m having a hard time with is the claim that current haulers just want to landfill material because that’s the most cost effective disposal method. I’m in a unique position to say most of my clients (private haulers) are not solely looking to landfill material. They’re already trying very hard to extract extra value for the materials they collection so they’ll be more competitive when bidding. Some of them own landfills. Some of them don’t. Most of them landfill material as a last resort.

I absolutely believe there is opportunity here and hope Rubicon’s distinguishing characteristics were simply missing from this article or somehow under represented.

Also, I’m thrilled that HN has a post about garbage mixed with technology. That’s a combo that I’m incredibly passionate about and love the opportunity to get this community more involved in.

[1]: http://www.wm.com/documents/pdfs/oakleaf.pdf