When we moved to Florida from Seattle in 1994, we were immediately struck by Tampa's extravagant practice of twice a week garbage pickup. It's so nice to be able to space out the Tuesday morning pickup knowing the truck will be back in just three more days.

Back in Seattle, each household is issued one small garbage can (really a garbage cup) from the City.  Our latte sipping garbage man came by in a propane powered truck once a week.  If we couldn't fit our week's refuse in the regulation sized container, we had to purchase a $5.00 coupon to attach to each additional bag. We reduced our garbage output by making clothing for the children out of egg cartons and pizza boxes. They were teased mercilessly, but the advertising revenue from Eggland's Best and Domino's really added up.

This morning, when I read about City Councilmember, John Dingfelder's suggestion to cut back garbage collections to once a week to save money, it struck me as a no-brainer. Dingfelder asked the solid waste department to figure out how much such a cutback would save. Linda Saul-Sena pointed out  the environmental benefits of fewer truck trips. Then Mayor Iorio,who earlier proposed raising garbage collection rates by a buck fifty a month, wondered aloud how much would be saved by a once a week pickup schedule.

"It's the same amount of garbage that has to be picked up," she said. "It is a different distribution of work, but it still is relatively the same amount of work."

Madam Mayor, if you think making two round-trips to pick up half a load is the same work as making one trip to pick up a full load, you need to pull one of  Senator Bob Graham's famous workdays with the sanitation department.

How to explain our otherwise pragmatic mayor's resistance to an idea that is clearly worth  exploring? I can understand a reluctance to do anything that would result in more layoffs. And in the summer months, the air could get a little ripe downwind, but if there was ever a time to cut back on unnecessary services, this is it.  Plus, would it be so bad for us to recycle and compost a little more and send a little less to the landfill? Oscar the grouch would dig us for it.