The Sicilian town of Castelbuono has replaced garbage trucks with donkeys and claims to be saving money as well as helping to beat global warming. Since last February, six donkeys have replaced the four rubbish trucks in the town of 10,000 people.
A donkey costs around 1,200 euros (1,730 dollars) to buy, plus an about 2,000 euros a year for food and cleaning, compared to a 30,000 euros for a truck that needs 7,000 to 8,000 euros maintenance per year, he added.
Each carrying two wooden boxes, the donkeys are accompanied by garbage men who have been renamed “ecological operators”.
Makes way too much sense.
You’ve gotta be an ass to take jobs away from hard working garbage trucks.
In the United States you would have to replace donkeys with elephants. The garbage we produce would break the back of a mere donkey.
I like the idea of anyone being creative for the issues in their area and the problem of climate change. This is not a solution that would work in NYC. However, looking at the solutions of each area with an eye to climate change makes a lot of sense. It’s a good mix of thinking locally and globally at the same time.
Who cleans up after the donkeys? Or do they wear diapers?
What everyone avoids is how the development of the garbage truck, last century, cut down on the amount of animal feces in the street and water supply. Being a Luddite is dumb, I am not going backwards no matter how hot it gets. Why does no one mention record levels of ice formation in Antarctica, when they talk about loss of ice in the Arctic circle during global warming debates? However, saving a few Euro’s makes sense to me. Just watch where you step.
#5 – widgethead,
Why does no one mention record levels of ice formation in Antarctica, when they talk about loss of ice in the Arctic circle during global warming debates?
Because, the increased ice formation in part of Antarctica is caused by global warming too. It is the result of a temporary increase in precipitation over Antarctica, which last I heard, gets about 2″ of snow a year, making it the world’s largest desert.
This is a temporary effect of global warming. The ice melt is permanent. In fact, if the Greenland ice melts, it would not reform even at a temperature equal to that of 1800. This is because it formed during an ice age and didn’t melt because of it’s altitude. I’m not sure if the same is true of the ice on the Antarctic peninsula.
Sorry for the long sidetrack from the real thread, but widgethead asked.
“widgethead” is an appropriate term – for someone who seems not to get beyond talking heads for science. I await your link to a relevant source for all the ice in the Antarctic increasing.
Meanwhile, rent Quackser Fortune has a Cousin in the Bronx. A silly enough movie will teach you just one of the many uses for dung collected from the street. Cripes – after all the discussion here, there still are beginners who know nothing of compost or biogas or the many uses of decaying natural products?
Being a luddte is certainly dumb, but then ignoring a good solution simply because it is not technical is even dumber…..
While I am sure the internal combustion engine did much to bring down the level of horse and donkey shit in all the cities, they are also brought with them acid rain. And animals shit is a lot more useful that the piles of old tires and and all that used oil lying about…..
#6 #7 You guys are so easy to bait. No real surprises in your responses. Lets all go back to the stone ages when everything was so much better. Man lived in harmony with nature, etc. etc. Yeah, I know Antarctica’s a desert, but lots of ice forms around it when it get wintertime, winter, snow, ice, imagine how that happens. I think it must be magic. Yeah, dung has lots of uses, monkeys throw it at each other. I see a comparison here. Read about the tons of crap NYC had to remove each day in 1900 versus 30 years later and the problems, yeah problems, it caused. Everyone needs a horse, no more cars, if you want to solve global warming bring back trains and put a bunch of carbon black particle in the upper atmosphere, that will cool things off for a few years. Yeah, biogas, seems the Nazis used a lot of this to run their cars during the war.
Animal exploitation… where’s PETA?
#9 – widgethead,
I was about to respond to your incredibly silly post about pack ice, which has nothing to do with the ice sheets or glaciers, but realized that it is completely unnecessary because …
Godwin’s Law!! You lose.
And, no, you can’t claim that your post about them was in any way relevant to the discussion at hand. In fact, even the ice in Antarctica was off-topic here.
Dang. Forgot to close my tag. The bold was meant to end after the one line Godwin’s Law statement. I hate it when that happens.
[Fixed. – ed.]
#11, Your right, you win, I did not violate Godwin’s Law, no mention of Hitler, but who cares, I am glad you feel you won. I walked to work today, I guess I saved the planet today. Your right, pack ice, I am just another silly poster, but you sure got mad, or at least you seem to have gotten mad. Just for today, maybe I just wanted to get someone else angry. One never knows.
Hmmm, 21st century – 12th century…. I must be dyslexic because I thought we were in the former.
#11 – Sorry but you’re dead wrong. Once Global Warming (TM) has been mentioned, everything is on topic because everything causes GW and everything is caused by GW. Too hot: GW, Too cold: GW, Too Wet: GW, Too Dry: GW. The Global Warming Law supercedes Godwin’s law if GW is mentioned first. It’s no longer possible to be off-topic.
#14, I like you, your globally hot in your reasoning, I wish I was calm, cool and collected to have said what you said, but I guess I am globally warm.
I do not have any idea were Eidard finds this stuff, but it is tool cool for words. We should think locally and act globally.
Have they really accounted for everything in saying this is environmentally better? Donkeys have to be fed, and that food production may have an impact. Do donkeys emit methane too? Plus how much garbage can a donkey carry, like a few families worth?
#16 – MikeN,
Sometimes you really crack me up. Do you really imagine that the impact of food production for a donkey will equal the amount of problems caused by digging up diesel fuel, the inevitable spills, the carbon emissions, the particulate emissions, the emissions from the drill, the emissions from the refinery, the emissions from the ship or pump to move the fuel from point a (the well) to point b (the refinery) to point c (the filling station)?
Do you actually read the stuff you write?
As I recall, one city had to use donkeys because the streets were too narrow for garbage trucks, not because of costs. That looks like the picture used in the article.
Hey, you use what works. Bushels of garbage out at the expense of a little burro dung? Great trade.
Forgot to add: climate change is not a problem and is, in fact, something to be welcomed.