I Don’t Talk Smack, I Talk Trash

I had to buy a new trash can the other day. The city provides trash cans to each home, but in our municipal leaders’ ongoing efforts to make garbage, recycling, and yard waste collection as onerous and expensive as possible, on March 30 of this year collection rates increased by 35%, and we changed over to a system so complicated that each household needs three separate bins, a six-page flyer with photographs of which items can go into which bins, instructions on how to prepare your items for collection (my personal favorite being that we should keep food scraps such as chicken bones and banana peels in the refrigerator until collection day), a color-coded calendar so that you know which day to put out which bins, and a warning that if you get any of the foregoing incorrect, your pickups will be suspended. The justification for the change was that our city officials are trying to reduce the amount of material going into our landfills and save our planet, but their newfound-and-not-at-all-superficial-or-politically-expedient concern for the environment is somewhat undercut by the fact that they they now have twice as many trucks on the roads making three times the collection runs that they used to make. The city is also now using new trucks, having trashed the old fleet. The average person might think this sounds a tad wasteful, but HEY, let’s not let common sense get in the way of being kind to Mother Nature and by “being kind to Mother Nature,” I of course mean, “increasing revenue.” In addition, all collection services have been contracted out to a different company than the one that had been working efficiently and competently for as long as I can remember. Instead, the city has gone with a cheaper company, the only appreciable difference between the former company and the new company being that the former company used to actually show up and take the trash away. With the new company, they might show up or they might not. It makes trash day suspenseful and exciting!

In any event, garbage rates went up, so I opted to get the smaller can at a non-proportionally-reduced rate that’s still more than what I was paying for the larger can before the rate increase. City Utility workers came and took away my perfectly functional round 32-gallon can with wheels on it, which I never filled up anyway, and replaced it with what was supposed to be a 20-gallon can but is about half the size of my next door neighbor’s 20-gallon can provided to them by the city last year. Presumably, my old can is now sitting somewhere in a landfill, discarded and despondent, yet not decomposing. The new can has no wheels, no handles, a lid that doesn’t fit, and it’s also a weird shape. It’s a rectangle but narrower at the bottom than at the top. Also, I think they laid it on its side and had Jumbo the Elephant sit on it for a week before delivering it to me because the top and bottom are diamond-shaped, which is why the rectangular top doesn’t fit. Geometrically, it’s a trapezoidal rhombus. Or a rhombic trapezoid. Mathematically interesting, but not all that great for conveying my fingernail clippings, used Kleenex, and clumps of cat litter to the alley. After I’ve deposited into it the seven half-filled bags of daily garbage that only fit if I arrange then rearrange them in a puzzle-like formation as though it’s a smelly version of Tetris, it’s nearly impossible to take the can to the alley because there’s nowhere to grab onto the damn thing. There is a small lip around the edge that I can jam my fingernails into, but as a borderline germophobe I can’t say I enjoy that, particularly considering that that’s the same area of the can that they use to hook it onto the garbage truck’s lift. Its awkward shape also requires that I hug the thing close to my body as I’m carrying it. Why, this isn’t a hideous bacteria-laden nightmare at all!

After putting up with it for a month, I called the city and asked if I could please have the 20-gallon can that they used to give out because it is both larger and has less potential for infectious disease transmission. I had a rather lengthy conversation with the city employee that consisted mostly of me listening to him tap on his computer, at the end of which he said: “um. No.” At that point, I went to Home Depot to buy my own trash can.

Upon entering the store, I spotted an employee, which, if you’ve ever been to Home Depot, is a rare and wonderful occurence. I made a beeline toward Orange Apron and said, “hello! Can you tell me where the trash cans are?”

Orange Apron smiled at me. “I could tell you …”

Oh, hell no. Don’t even think about saying what you’re about to say.

“… but then I’d have to kill you.”

Christ.

This is exactly the kind of thing that saps my strength on a daily basis.

And really kind of gutsy of the guy, considering we were standing right next to the power drills. One day, Orange Apron, one day. Fortunately for him, and also for me because I don’t want to go to prison, that was not the day. Instead, I played along, saying, “yes, but if you don’t tell me, then I’ll have to kill you,” which elicited a sound from Orange Apron that would be most accurately phonetically rendered as “HAR HAR HAR HOO!” So glad I could amuse you, Orange Apron. Now tell me where the cans are, or I will hit you with my purse. The cans were in the garden section, so I bought not only a can, but also a small, very prickly cactus that seemed to suit my mood that afternoon.

In addition to screwing up garbage collection for residential customers, our halfwit mayor and the slobbering goons known as our City Council have also removed all dumpsters from downtown and, based on the mountains of garbage I saw in the alleys in Chinatown a few days ago, I’m going to guess Chinatown as well. The reason for this, according to a Public Utilities spokesperson, is that dumpsters provide, “a cover for crime.” Well, possibly. But they also provide a cover for garbage, which is preferable to what’s going on now, which is that bags of trash are just left out in downtown alleys, ostensibly to be collected three times a day instead of two or three times a week, but in actuality to provide an all-you-can-eat-or-strew-around buffet for the crow and rat population. In response to the criticism that having so many more garbage pickups and therefore so many more garbage trucks on the road is not exactly eco-conscious, the city has responded that it’s okay because the new trucks are powered by natural gas, and as everyone knows using natural gas has zero environmental impact. Wait, no. I’m thinking of unicorn tears. Using unicorn tears has zero environmental impact. Using natural gas does have an environmental impact, particularly when you are using it to power a bunch of trucks that are driving around the already congested streets, screwing up the traffic patterns, and forcing all of the other fossil fuel burning cars to idle in the resultant traffic jams all day long.

Then a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that all trash cans will be removed from parks and city-owned public areas. Citizens are advised that if they are in a park or walking along along a public street and find themselves in possession of something they would like to discard, they should take it home, consult their six-page flyer, place it in the appropriate bin (or, if it’s half a sandwich from their lunch that wasn’t eaten because it fell on the ground, into the refrigerator until trash day), put the bin out in the alley, and hope that someone actually comes to pick it up. I’m sure that everyone will be extremely cooperative regarding this plan.

Our mayor is up for reelection this fall and one of his more sycophantic city council members has announced that she will be running against him. When asked how she will differentiate herself from him since they have an almost identical voting record she stated, “[i]t’s hard for me to conceive of running a campaign based on process and personality if you have a good record. I think that’s the dilemma.” That’s an interesting statement, in the sense that is contains no content whatsoever, yet it answers any lingering questions anyone might have about the woman. So not only will I not be voting for Mayor Jughead, I think I will also have to take a pass on Councilwoman Big Ethel. Instead, I am throwing my support behind this guy:

If we’re going to turn the whole city into a dump, we might as well get someone who knows the terrain.