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An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

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Re: An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

#101

Post by gfosco »

t0mbstone wrote: post #10

Startup ideas inspired by Always Sunny in Philadelphia? http://itsalwayssunny.wikia.com/wiki/The_Gang_Recycles_Their... What's next? An Uber-like service that will deliver gasoline directly to your car that is parked in your driveway? Hmm... Come to think of it, that would actually be pretty sweet. I would never have to stop and fill up my gas tank! It would just always be full! A gas delivery truck would come in the…

This isn't very uber-like, since it's only for businesses. I'd love to be able to easily get someone to pick up cardboard and other trash at my house. We're big users of Amazon Prime and also starting a business that involves a lot of large deliveries, so we're completely buried in cardboard and the expensive local garbage/recycling service cannot support us. We're ordering our second dumpster in less than a year to try to clear out.

Re: An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

#102

Post by awa »

t0mbstone wrote: post #10

Startup ideas inspired by Always Sunny in Philadelphia? http://itsalwayssunny.wikia.com/wiki/The_Gang_Recycles_Their... What's next? An Uber-like service that will deliver gasoline directly to your car that is parked in your driveway? Hmm... Come to think of it, that would actually be pretty sweet. I would never have to stop and fill up my gas tank! It would just always be full! A gas delivery truck would come in the…

That's why I like Electric cars, come home, hook it up to charger and full charge when u get up

Re: An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

#103

Post by degenerate »

Tharkun wrote: post #90
jelder wrote: post #5

This is great but what if, hold on, we paid taxes.

I pay roughly a 50% income tax, and in spite of that municipal garbage collection is, well, garbage. Regular waste is easy enough: weekly collection is OK. Larger items which can be incinerated are OK-ish: need to make an appointment two weeks in advance, and pay by weight. Anything else and I'm screwed. I'd like to get rid of a metal ladder, but it can't be incinerated. I'm supposed to take it to a municipal recycli…

You do, it's called throw it in the front yard. Anything metal will be picked up and melted down for $ by junk seekers.

Used motor oil, insulation, car batteries, and other toxic stuff, I could see a door service being useful.

Re: An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

#105

Post by tintor »

t0mbstone wrote: post #10

Startup ideas inspired by Always Sunny in Philadelphia? http://itsalwayssunny.wikia.com/wiki/The_Gang_Recycles_Their... What's next? An Uber-like service that will deliver gasoline directly to your car that is parked in your driveway? Hmm... Come to think of it, that would actually be pretty sweet. I would never have to stop and fill up my gas tank! It would just always be full! A gas delivery truck would come in the…

Fill it up on the parking and wash exterior at the same time.

Re: An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

#106

Post by revmoo »

Tharkun wrote: post #90
jelder wrote: post #5

This is great but what if, hold on, we paid taxes.

I pay roughly a 50% income tax, and in spite of that municipal garbage collection is, well, garbage. Regular waste is easy enough: weekly collection is OK. Larger items which can be incinerated are OK-ish: need to make an appointment two weeks in advance, and pay by weight. Anything else and I'm screwed. I'd like to get rid of a metal ladder, but it can't be incinerated. I'm supposed to take it to a municipal recycli…

This is just because your local municipality sucks. My local trash pickup is amazing and takes anything I could ever want them to. Don't conflate a shitty local government with a need for private enterprise.

Re: An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

#107

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dullgiulio wrote: post #96
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The city council should...have the local utility come and collect big items for free I don't produce lots of big trash. Not sure why I--nor anybody else--should subsidise people who produce lots of big trash.

I think the free service was born out of despair for people consistently leaving big trash on the roadside. While I understand you as I don't produce big trash myself, I guess it's still better to just pay a little more and get rid of the bigger problems having trash on the roadside would bring.

New York City fines people $100 to $400 for using improper receptacles, leaving receptacles uncovered, putting trash in front of others' buildings and/or leaving loose rubbish lying about [1]. Note that these can accumulate, e.g. if you put loose trash in front of someone else's building in an improper receptacle, that could be $300 to $1,000 of fines.

Those fines pay for enforcement. They also pay for picking up garbage dumped by unknown persons. This model shifts the burden from everyone to just the offenders. I find it preferable to small households subsidising big ones.

[1] http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/downloads/pdf/about/laws/DSN...

Re: An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

#108

Post by jelder »

dgacmu wrote: post #104
jelder wrote: post #5

This is great but what if, hold on, we paid taxes.

Their target isn't residential collection -- it's commercial, which isn't covered by taxes in most places.

That makes it sound a lot less stupid. The Uber comparison strongly implies that it is consumer focused, and intended to privatize an existing public service (mass transit in that case).

Re: An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

#109

Post by dwaltrip »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #28
jelder wrote: post #5

This is great but what if, hold on, we paid taxes.

Wouldn't it be better if we were allowed to interact voluntarily? Pay for what we wanted and used, and support people and causes through charity instead of under duress?

Governments are a default state produced by groups of humans. They are inevitable. Making them better is incredibly hard work, but that is the only option.

Often times, they are improved by working outside the system itself, it seems. So there are some interesting options for tackling this hard problem. The company mentioned in the article may turn out to be a great example of this.

Governments do come in many forms, with varying size, composition, and effectiveness. However, the ancap vision of no government and everything done by "voluntary" contract has no meaningful basis in reality at this point, as far as I can tell.

Re: An ‘Uber for garbage’ picks up steam, and $11.7M in Series A funding

#110

Post by rubicon33 »

pmalynin wrote: post #17
t0mbstone wrote: post #10

Startup ideas inspired by Always Sunny in Philadelphia? http://itsalwayssunny.wikia.com/wiki/The_Gang_Recycles_Their... What's next? An Uber-like service that will deliver gasoline directly to your car that is parked in your driveway? Hmm... Come to think of it, that would actually be pretty sweet. I would never have to stop and fill up my gas tank! It would just always be full! A gas delivery truck would come in the…

http://www.filld.com/

I swear business materialize out of thin air, when someone literally just thinks of them. How else can you explain that it seems like EVERY idea already has an app + business!
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