Floating somewhere on the spectrum between sublime and ridiculous, New Haven's new trash and recycling program.

Bigger bins for recyclables are good. Smaller bins for regular trash are fine (provided they really follow through on the promise to provide extras for places that need it... lots of multifamily and apartment dwellings here.) RFID chips to track and reward how much a household recycles... really? There's got to be a better way to spend that budget line.

I mean, kudos to encouraging recycling, especially by incentive. (Where I lived in Westchester Co., it was by penalty, and it never seemed to make a bit of difference, because enforcement was too expensive.) But all things considered, I'd rather have the ability to recycle more categories of items. The promise of a $10 gift card is nice, but not having to check a complex sorting list when you have to recycle a PET bottle is nicer.

That said, I'll give a $10 gift card to the person who convinces Glenn Beck that the recycling bin chip is actually part of some diabolical Socialist/One World Government/Antichrist tracking scheme. Which, of course, it is.