Location of Receptacles
Where should the can be taken from by the collector and to what place returned? The answer is important for it is one of the chief factors in determining the cost of collection. The location seriously affects the speed of collection. In Milwaukee it was found in 1911 that the average collector could enter from fifty to one hundred houses in an eight-hour day, and that the time consumed in cleaning one house was slightly over three minutes. The Cleansing Superintendent of London reports that a one-horse van of four cubic yards capacity, hauling to a dump two miles away, under normal conditions could make from 240 to 260 calls and collections each ten hours. If the can is placed on the edge of the curb, he says, it is possible to make 500 collections a day.
Some cities require that the can be carried by the residents to the curb. Others collect from rear yard, cellar, areaway or alley. In cities which collect during the day and require the cans to be left at the curb serious objections are reported because the array of cans and rubbish along the street on the day of collection makes the thoroughfare unsightly. To overcome this objection several plans have been carried out:
(1) To collect at night.
(2) To require that cans cannot remain on the street more than one hour after being emptied.
(3) To require collectors to go into basements and back yards and to return the cans to these places.
(4) To collect in rear alleys.
Experience has shown that it is very difficult to enforce a regulation by which cans should be taken from the curb by householders at any particular time after they have been emptied. In many homes the husband is the only person who does this kind of work. The can has to be taken in the morning to the curb. The empty, therefore, must remain in the street until noon and if the collection is not made until afternoon or the husband does not go home to his midday meal, it remains there until night. Many cities report that to eliminate the unsightliness of miscellaneous boxes, pails, cans and barrels which line the curb on collection day the citizens are willing to pay the extra cost of having the collectors take the cans from the basements or rear yards and return them to the same place. It has also been found that rear yard collection facilitates and somewhat reduces the cost of street cleaning.
It is generally agreed that the best plan is to collect from rear alleys, but these do not exist in many cities. In a few places which have alleys the officials say their experience has not been satisfactory; but in nearly every instance there has not been found to exist any cooperation between the collection force and the public, due to the failure of the officials to educate the people.