Garbage Truck Stalking

Wednesday.

Garbage day.

No big deal, right? 

Not this summer.  On garbage day, I turn into a crazy woman.

See, when we moved here to La Crescent, we were given two green recycling bins.  We threw recyclable stuff in there and garbage in a garbage bag.  On garbage day, we put it all out.

And the garbage man threw it all in the same bin.

It reminded me of the time my friend Russ and I sat in a meeting at the Synod office.  It was obviously garbage day, because while we sat facing the windows looking out at the alley, we watched employees from all the businesses housed inside the building take out recycling and garbage, dumping them into the appropriately labeled twin dumpsters outside the window.

That afternoon, the garbage truck rolled in.  It shoved its two prongs under the garbage dumpster, hoisted it up, and dumped the contents into the back.  Then - beep, beep, beep -- it backed up . . . and then did the exact same thing with the recycling dumpster.

Russ and I looked at each other -- one of those, "Did you just see what I just saw?" looks.  The recycling dumpster was clearly marked with big recycling labels.  One poor woman had struggled that morning to lift an obviously heavy box of paper up to dump it in.  All that work and everything went into the same dumpster?

So that's kind of what I was thinking as I saw the garbage man throw everything into the same bin.  Seriously?  I separated that stuff for a reason, dude!

(And yes, I've had a lot of time on my hands this summer.  Plenty of time to stalk the garbage man.)

The next week I tried to be more obvious.  Living in an apartment, garbage from six apartments gets set on the curb on Wednesdays, so I set my garbage by everyone else's and then put the recycling bin three feet away.

When the truck pulled up in front of the apartment building that afternoon, I spied on him through my blinds.  All the neighbors garbage went in . . . our garbage went in . . . and then my recyclables went in.  Everything in the same bin once again.  What the heck?

The next week was the same except one of the green bins got dumped into a separate bin.  Gasp!  Someone broke the recycling secret code!  What was I doing wrong?

I missed a week of stalking, so I don't know what happened that time.

The next week, I super-sorted.  I went above and beyond.  I put plastics in one bag, paper in another, and glass in another.  I didn't put out the green bin at all, but lined up my three bags, three feet away from the garbage bags.

Success!  My little bags were emptied into a separate bin from the general garbage bin!

I wasn't super fond of the system, though.  Our kitchen is pretty small.  How was I going to keep up this four-bag system?

A month into my garbage/recycling debacle, the game changed.  Same truck . . . different garbage man.  He looked through the vast collection on the curb, threw some of it in the bin, and left most of it behind.

Say what?

I thought maybe this guy was more serious about recycling.  Maybe he separated things better and another truck would be coming later for the rest?

Nope.  Twenty-four hours later, four garbage bags were still sitting on the curb.

I looked up the city's number on the internet and gave "the man" a ringy-dingy.

I explained the situation.  I got told to call someone else.  I called that person.  They said to call someone else.  Finally the third person seemed interested in helping.

"What kind of garbage bags did you use?" she asked.

That seemed like an odd question.  I felt a brief pang of wrongdoing.  I was using generic, store-brand garbage bags.  Had they been deemed not strong enough?  The woman on the phone continued before I got a chance to say more.

"Were you using City of La Crescent garbage bags?" she pressed.

Uh, what?

"The city has garbage bags?" I asked.

"You can buy them at the grocery store, or the gas station, or the recycling center," she said.  "No bags of trash get picked up unless they're city bags."

"Well, for a month I've been putting our garbage out in non-city bags and they got taken," I tried to explain.

"Well, unless they're in city garbage bags, they're not supposed to be picked up," she said.

"What about recycling?"

"Recycling goes in the green bins.  Do you have one?"

"We have two!  But the garbage man usually dumps everything in the same bin.  He only took it when I sorted everything out in separate bags."

"Well you don't have to do that," she said.  "You have to put your paper and cardboard into a paper bag, but all other recyclables can go in the green bins."

Ah, there was my problem.  I'd thrown it all in the bin together before my multi-bag experiment.

I sent Kevin to the gas station to get the special bags.  $30 for 30 bags.  We filled 'em up with the garbage that had been left behind the week before.  Well, the two bags that were ours.  The others sat on the curb the entire week.

The next week I set out the green bin of plastics, tin, and glass.  I set out the bag of paper.  Finally, I set out our new City of La Crescent garbage bags.

I considered going around to each apartment in our building and explaining the system, not wanting everyone's garbage to be rejected again.

And I was feeling a little smug, finally knowing the system.

And then the first garbage man came by and took everything, city bag or no city bag.

Seriously?

Well, at least he put my recyclables in separate bins from the garbage.

So every week on Wednesday, when I hear anything that sounds like a garbage truck, I jump up and run to the front window.  Every week the guy takes everything, city bag or no city bag.  I don't get it.

And I know I'm neurotic.

But I guess as long as they take our garbage, that's the important thing, right?