The Clean Boston Initiative
- Alex Alex
- May 5
- 11 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Reduce, Reuse.
The Clean Boston Initiative
Policy Research + Proposal + Philosophy for the beautification of the City,
and the restructuring of Boston Public Works Departments managing:
Household Waste Collection
Metal, Paper, and Glass Recycling
Compost
Textiles
Appliances and Tech
Philosophical Rationale
We are over consuming. That is the foundation of an American Identity premised on consumption and capitalism. When my bike was stolen last August, I bought a second-hand bike from a Jamaica Plain’s business that restores older bikes. My new-old bike cost me $600(40 hours at my part time job). That transaction did not contribute to GDP –how this nation measures its health– because only new production factors in the calculus.
Overconsumption would still be an insidious problem on its own(soaring obesity rates, toxin saturation, brain chemistry hijacking), but its damage is magnified by the waste and disregard for goods, labor, and life. A plate of 10 chicken wings represents at least 5 birds, and I would say most contain meat from 10 different ones.
In addition to trashed food and textiles, we carelessly abuse materials that are so valuable but are made worthless (in our minds) by mass production and consumer alienation. We, in material terms, access riches beyond what the most tyrannical monarchs ever could, and yet, we are miserable. Slowly dying, from simultaneous excess and deprivation.
Metal is infinitely recyclable. Every beer can, each 3,000 lb car embodies the many costs of mining: human impact, distance, labor, extraction impacts on environments. An industry dedicated to capturing and reusing metal creates a constant source of jobs, with direct lines feeding cheaper materials into other industries.
Glass, again, is nearly infinitely reusable. So many plastic containers used for condiments or foods could be directly replaced with glass. Glass can be used in art work or sustainable construction for the Boston developments I propose. There are people in Congress who were grown adults by the time milkmen disappeared.
Plastic: its life cycle from oil drilling to disposal is one of the most destructive materials we’ve ever created. Most are derived from petroleum products, the final good in a chain of noxious by-products that does not stop with plastic. We all have plastics in our blood streams. Children conceived today meet plastic before they meet their parents. Its constant production and pervasive nature give undue power over geo-politics to despotic regimes, corporations, and corrupt politicians. Plastic has entirely replaced key species in many biomes, seen most hauntingly in our oceans.
Food. Nationally, individually, industrially, we trash 100,000,000,000 lbs (100 billion) of food every single year. Overweight/obesity is a global health epidemic affecting ⅔ of Americans and 20% of children. And yet food insecurity persists.
All this trashed food could be used to provide high quality feed to livestock, rather than the soy/corn slop they are gorged on. It can also be used to grow more food. Not only is it insane that we would rather excess food rot in dumpsters than feed people, livestock, or grow more food, it is sinful.
Add to this the utter destruction of land and topsoil thanks to industrial mono-cropping, abuse of water resources, poisoning of animals and ecosystems due to petrochemicals like -cides and fertilizers. I can go on and on, and will, in “Cook Boston” my food policy research and proposal document to be released soon.
Think back to the milkmen that would deliver fresh milk in the mornings and collect empty glasses for reuse, in one go. Why is it so hard to understand that this is how most of our material economies should operate? It’s not just an ecological win, these companies would save so much time and money on material extraction and container production.
Ask yourself, “why is it cheaper for them to drill for oils, transport, refine, process, treat, form, and transport once again, just for the bottle to wind up in the trash –rather than reuse already made containers?”
It is not cheaper; we pay the true costs. We pay with our taxes that subsidize their profits, their tax breaks and incentives, and the infrastructure they use(trade deals, roads, bridges, schools). We pay with the rising healthcare costs as their chemicals leach into our bodies and brains, seeding invisible epidemics. We pay with the trash that endlessly blows around our homes and nature, rising with the tides.
We pay in blood, 50k annual deaths to cars alone –do not mention those out of sight,
does a person suffer and die if no one is around to see it?
The chaos the buffoon unleashed on global trade relations presents a crisis and opportunity: the cost of everything dependent on this material-intensive production cycle will skyrocket; however, we are more than capable of, and should be, reorienting our economies to form a closed material loop and emphasize local/regional.
I am presenting a comprehensive overhaul of our systems. This document will reference many other policy proposals I am currently working on. We do not have the time for piecemeal solutions. This Clean Boston Initiative will focus on the waste produced by companies and consumers. The systems I propose are more economically sound than the current ways we live.
Summarized Policy Proposals
Immediate Action
Individual Accountability
Increased enforcement of current litter laws + Modifications
Civic Pride through the Boston Summer Games
Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation
Companies will be charged for the clean up of their branded products
Planned Obsolescence Fines
Right to Repair + City Sponsored Repair Days
Ongoing to Long Term Action
Redesigning Sanitation Collections
Street and truck redesign
Commercial Composting
Negotiating deals with local/regional farmers
Near Total Commercial Plastics Ban
Scheduled targets and incentives for commercial plastic reduction. Meeting or exceeding targets will result in waiving EPR fines.
Yearly trash audits(quantity, kind, origin), as data is collected for Boston Summer Games
Reduce, Reuse.
You're all grownups.
If you can’t manage to live without constantly trashing material, like most humans in history have, I don’t know what to tell you.
You can have a stable world with abundance for all who pitch in,
or you can have one more decade in a collapsing world with your coke in every flavor and size.
Are we really not capable, in terms of ingenuity and implementation, of a world where products exist not to make money, but to play intentional roles in our lives?
We will never be able to get rid of plastic. We can never clean it from our bodies, track down every scrap in the ocean, unbury it (though look out for pending proposals on cleaning landfills), or make it obsolete.
We also need it in our lives. So let's use this versatile, important tool for medicines and research (these fields still need to work to cut down material waste because expanded healthcare networks will not scale in terms of consumption [stay alert for coming proposals on healthcare as well]).
Immediate Action
Individual Accountability
Increased enforcement of current litter laws + Modifications
Current litter laws are strong on paper, but are meaningless in effect. Cigarette smokers will almost certainly toss their cigarette butts on the ground. This behavior is so normalized that I get dirty looks when I congratulate them for littering.
Fast food, chips, soft drinks, coffee cups, and liquor bottles, cigarettes; there are clear items that are consistently littered. Take a walk out anywhere in the city and you will find these items in the gutters. Broken glass from beer bottles is as common as Dunkin’s cups.
Pulled from Central Sq in Eastie, prevalent all over Whether deputized citizens or new positions within sanitation or BPD, we need more enforcement. Fines for littering will increase exponentially, able to be worked off through sweat equity. Litterers can reduce their community service hours if they identify other litterers.
Consistent disregard for public welfare will result in ban from public services. Eg; if you cannot pick up your trash on the T or in parks, you do not deserve to access these spaces
picked up from the stairs in Aquarium Civic Pride through the Boston Summer Games
These annual summer games are meant to spotlight the city, create neighborhood and city cohesion through shared identity and friendly competition. See Joy is Revolution for more.
The entry fee is litter clean up, whether as individual or team competitors.
Neighborhoods will score points for winning events, but litter clean up also adds to their tally, with multipliers for cleaning outside of their neighborhoods. This extends the Games throughout the entire year.
Children who go out to clean their neighborhood with their teams or schools will develop a sense of protection and pride over their city. I am trying to establish a positive feedback loop: they associate cleaning their city with fun and community, and thus are more likely to call out other litterers when they see it happening. Eventually the need for increased city enforcement will be supplanted by citizens who protect their living spaces.
Extended Producer Responsibility Legislation
Companies will be charged for the clean up of their branded products
I have spent the month of April cleaning 600lbs of garbage. I like to post my progress on Reddit. I get many thanks, people sharing their own anger and despair, the amount of garbage they see, as well as dozens of people telling me about their own efforts or asking to join a more official event I put on.
I talk about holding corporations accountable in these posts. I often get people saying they don't understand why a corporation like Pepsi Co or Dunkin should be charged for trash one of their customers littered. Here is my explanation.
I am running for mayor. This entails people-to-people marketing with items like flyers and pamphlets with my bio and platform. Yes, people who accept these items are responsible for either keeping them or disposing of them properly. Adults and under 18s alike should all have this basic courtesy.
However, as the person who generated all this material for a self-serving motive, I am also responsible if flyers with my name wind up littering the streets. Given that my name is plastered on these flyers, responsibility can and should be traced back to me.
Expanded enforcements and consequences like community service tackle the personal responsibility part of this problem. Extended producer responsibilities ensure that entities/companies cannot produce excessive packaging without concern for where it ends up after sale. They will find ways to incentivize customers to return the packaging for reuse.
There is a real cost to all this garbage. I spent money on trash bags and gloves. I got scraped and poked by branches and glass shards. I spent 3 hours collecting 80 lbs of garbage, time I could've spent doing anything else (opportunity cost). The bill comes due and we (the common people) end up paying it with our taxes and with the effects on the environment and our bodies.
EPR pushes companies to ditch single use plastics and a consume-at-all-cost profit motive that burns our world for momentary gain. And EPR encapsulates more than just packaging: the chemicals dumped into waterways, saturating the air, sprayed on our foods, leaching out into environments at extraction and processing points.
Planned Obsolescence Fines
We’ve all made the same observation: the stuff we buy now is of lower quality, doesn’t last as long, breaks just when prices are surging. Again, measuring economic health with GDP incentivizes companies to create subpar, inferior products that break. Creating a $100 work boot that lasts 10 years and a customer wants to repair is a worse financial decision than selling $50 dollar boots that have to be replaced every year.
Across sectors, from tech and appliances, to clothing and endless subscriptions, the quality of what we own has plummeted.
Even though we recognize this robbery, people’s brain chemistry has been hijacked by the constant release of dopamine from endless online ordering and same day fulfillment.
P.O.F’s punish companies for these tactics. Baseline research will have to be conducted to determine how long items like fridges, microwaves, phones etc should last. Fines will be imposed by how much current products underperform the standard.
Right to Repair + City Sponsored Repair Days
Items like lawn mowers, personal electronics, microwaves, that should be refurbished, will be fixed at these events. Residents who donate them for use elsewhere can receive tax credits.
This is a perfect time to highlight trades people and to reorient classist/elitist attitudes around the different kinds of labor people perform.
These events are also opportunities for companies to reduce the POF’s and EPR fines. If they send company engineers/technicians, or share schematics/parts, their total fines will be reduced based on calculations performed by appropriate city bureaucrats.
Ongoing to Long Term Action
Redesigning Sanitation Collections
Street and truck redesign
More in depth street design proposals can be found in my urbanism policy proposal, but simplified: about 50% of on street parking space must be removed for various reasons. For sanitation rationales, look at this video:
Sanitation trucks block entire blocks while workers have to go bin by bin, lifting them up into the trucks.
I suggest replacing 3-5 parking spaces per block with heavy duty bins that can be lifted by trucks directly. These bins will be separated by compost, recyclables, and waste. Consolidating collection in this way preserves workers bodies and is more efficient, meaning more ground can be covered before bins are full.
People push back on my litterer critique by saying that the trash is actually blowing out of bins, not being thrown by people. I disagree, but the wind is a serious issue. Boston is a windy city and erratic climatic conditions have only strengthened gusts. This spring has been insane. Consolidating blocks of waste into these 3-5 spots with heavier lids addresses this issue.
Not every street can or should be moved to this model. Again, research must be performed by City Hall, and pilot programs started within the year.
Commercial Composting
Negotiating deals with local/regional farmers
I have worked across various food service jobs. The amount of food being thrown away is depressing. Boston must roll out a commercial food waste collection program, and quickly scale its compost facilities.
All this trashed food can be turned into rich soil used to grow more food. The city can negotiate deals with local growers for our compost, saving them the cost of fertilizers (which as I stated earlier will skyrocket in cost). This is an ancient practice that has only been supplanted by petrochemicals in recent memory. Fertilizer use destabilizes ecosystems and damages water sources. Municipal compost can protect Masscahusetts’ lands, laborers, and consumers.
Yearly trash audits(quantity, kind, origin), as data is collected for Boston Summer Games
As competitors collect their litter for admission, analysis must be done of the materials and likely origins. This data will be used to determine EPR fines, further refine legislation to stop litter production, and create a detailed trendline to show whether these initiatives are working.
Near Total Commercial Plastics Ban
Scheduled targets and incentives for commercial plastic reduction. Meeting or exceeding targets will result in waiving EPR fines.
Examples–What this Looks Like in Action
“Coffee” companies like Starbucks/Dunkins (as well as smaller operations) can pivot to bring-your-mug or use one-our-own. Starbucks is currently trying to rebrand as a stay-and-sit coffee house. This scheme fits right in.
Cup drop-off stations at places like transit stops, parks, near garbage bins, with liquid waste spots.
Penalties for throwing reusable cups away or being inconsiderate where you leave them
Cups tracked and tagged to orders with QR codes so know who is responsible. Get charged a fee if the cup is not returned within 48 hours.
Cup collection and return is ultimately the kind of thing we need to automate. AI and autonomous robots are incredible tools that should be liberating us of menial labor. Not crowding humans out in creating art, research, connection.
Infinite app, membership, and promotion opportunities from here.
Nicer mugs for members
Generic for regular orders.
Free upgrades, prizes like membership privileges for a week, or discounts for consistently bringing your cups. Break your streak and the reward ladder resets
I could add so much more but again, why am I doing all this work for y'all. These are multi-billion dollar companies, yet I, a single person working part time jobs —still not making enough for city rent— am coming up with these ideas.
Emphasis on local food production cuts need for absurd levels of plastic packaging and reckless use of fertilizer pesticides and herbicides.
Plenty of other countries use local methods like banana leaf plating. Opportunities for international ties and local entrepreneurship.
Fund startups making algae plastic or other alternatives
Eradicate marketing and consumption incentives that create inordinate amounts of waste, or multi material packaging that cannot be reused or recycled.
Replace plastic water bottles with highly filtered water stations all around cities and key spots like parks, museums, schools.
Pressure grocery stores to stop carrying synthetically derived polluting products like detergent and instead switch to models where we bring our dedicated containers to places for top offs. This would work for products like soaps, grains, cereals, coffee, oils, etc
Shift back to natural biodegradable textiles and shoe materials. Use every part of livestock. Revival of tanneries and leather workers.
Tax breaks/fine forgiveness for businesses that implement these changes ahead of schedule and take initiative.
I anticipate many people will say that what I propose is beyond the city’s power. I understand that some of my ideas will require city-state collaboration. Boston is Massachusetts' economic and cultural heart. The ideas I propose will benefit the entire state in real material and social terms. But we have to start from somewhere and getting the state on board will be easier if the city is on the same page and already modeling the framework.
Also, most of these ideas are entirely within the city’s power to implement, and I made sure the groundwork policy operated as such, like litter law enforcement or the Boston Summer Games.