Winston Smith, we know you don't recycle

The fancy new blue recycle bins that the county government has forced upon us come complete with a most Orwellian feature: a radio identification tag which allows the County to track how often the bin is used for recycling.

Maybe we can call the young Exec Mr. Has Bin or Kid Kan, since he’s the spirit behind the nearly $3 million program. You read that right. At a time of tight budgets and projected shortfalls, Howard is trying to green its little bit of America by going Big Blue. Part of that cost includes a nifty little radio-frequency identification tag that lets the county track which home has the bin and how often you recycle. Some petty gray-suited functionary is now going to assess my antisocial recycling opposition. It’s an intersection between Big Brother and garbage, not that there’s much difference between the two.

No word yet on when a similar device will be attached to Ulman's Escape hybrid so we know how often he drives it over the Crown Vic that he is chauffeured around in. Thanks to Columbia Talk for the pointer.