Large Trash

This is the season when piles of large trash bloom in our neighborhood each year. In front of almost every house is a pile of stuff, some piles large enough to fill multiple pick-up trucks. Still-usable furniture and broken furniture are mixed in with tree clippings, old cardboard boxes, bits of broken glass, appliances, bags of used clothes, stuffed animals, baby gear and straight-up trash.

As I jog each morning I am hypnotically drawn into the details of each pile. The waste is maddening. A charitable organization comes around every few months to pick up used clothing; why didn't people set out their used clothes one of those mornings? Or just drive the 2 blocks to the Good Will? And why is the "clean green" (plant matter) that we all put so carefully in our green bin each week laying here mixed with broken glass and melting cardboard? Couldn't the city have 2 separate large trash periods- one for non-plant stuff and one for plant stuff? What about a recycling amnesty period, where you can bring out all those old cardboard boxes without having to break them down and tie them with twine? What if the city helped sort through all this stuff and recycle the mattress springs and other special metals that don't go in your weekly curbside bin?

But here it all is, pile after pile. It all gets shoveled up with a back-hoe, and carted away by a tractor-trailer truck to be land-fill. Seems like at least 3/4 of it could be recycled or reused, but instead it's all mixed together in giant truck-sized piles that make me feel silly for putting each piece of junk mail and every paper-towel tube out on the curb each Tuesday in a brown paper bag.

I'm going into hibernation. Please wake me when large-trash season is over.