There's the rub.When I was at the Ceres Avenue trash pile, I noticed a lot of packing materials, food crates and bins that appeared to be from local businesses. Word on the street, from merchants and homeless people, was that some of the more unscrupulous merchants routinely dump their own trash on the streets or pay homeless people a few bucks to get rid of it for them.
The dumping got worse, one merchant claimed, when the city switched to a new recycling system that gave monopolies to companies in each sector of the city.
“I was paying $80 a month, and my cost went up to $300,” said the merchant, who said that rather than get gouged, some business owners began illegally dumping.
Just like Messico.