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| Like so many other energy drink cans I pick up from the sidewalks, streets, and playgrounds in my neighborhood (and probably as you could in yours) they give you enough energy to pay for them and drink them but not enough to recycle them. |
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How I Got to Be Your Garbage Guy . . . Seriously
College degree, some graduate work, retired, but working a part-time job, homeowner, and, as I walk my dog in Ohio City, in addition to picking up my dog’s poop (even another’s if there’s space in the bag and it’s nearby--remember I’m already bent over) I have been seen to pick up trash like a homeless derelict. What gives? First, the research, then the background, and possibly, the answer.
What I won’t pick up: tampons, condoms, latex gloves from impromptu handjobs, or--the very latest trend--used diapers.
Where I won’t pick up: your front lawn, driveway, or walk.
As for what and where I will pick up, consider this list of my collections two days before garbage day (when you’d think the spillage of regular garbage collection would have already been cleared):
Wednesday 9 PM
1 Richards’ Wild Irish Rose—Red (a traditional favorite)-187 ml., glass bottle
1 Richards’ Wild Irish Rose—Fruit-Flavored (a concession to modern taste)-187 ml., glass bottle
1 Pabst Blue Ribbon (nice to know the old brands are still around) 12 oz. aluminum can
1 Sprite 20 oz. (MTVers’ delight, thanks to marketing) clear green plastic bottle, 1 PETE
2 Pitt-Penn 10w-30 (whoever said the day of shadetree mechanics had passed?) 1 qt. white plastic container, 2 HDPE
1 Pitt-Penn 10W-40 (mix and match?--how much can it hurt if you’re down 3 quarts?) 1 qt white plastic container, 2 HDPE
2 mashed, delabelled 12 oz clear plastic bottles, 1 PETE
1 Arizona GrapeAde (fruit-flavored water, it proclaims) 23.5 oz., aluminum can
1 Magnum Malt Liquor, 40 oz. (a buzz in every bottle), clear glass bottle
Thursday 10:30 AM
1 Big Hug Grape 12 oz. translucent white plastic bottle, 1 HDPE
1 Cotton Club Cola 12 oz. aluminum can (displaying a “Please Recycle” message and symbol about ¼ in. high on back of can)
1 Deer Park Natural Spring Water (obviously someone who appreciates both nature and a bargain—Wal-Mart’s brand—if not a clean neighborhood) 1 pt. 9 oz., clear plastic bottle, 1 PETE, ”Please Recycle” request in attention-grabbing 6 point bright yellow type
1 Diet Coke 12 oz. aluminum can, mashed flat (so as to take less space in the environment, just as its consumer wished for him/her-self)
1 Budweiser, “King of Beers” 12 oz. brown glass bottle (full-caloried and states boldly “Non-Returnable Bottle”--I’d like to see them try and stop me! Does that mean you have to keep them?)
1 Dasani Water 20 oz. clear (blue tint) plastic bottle, 1 PETE, 5 cents ME, Cash Refund in CA (you can’t even walk to ME for 5 cents, and CA is speculative)
1 Foster’s Premium 25.4 oz. aluminum can, 5 cents return various states, not OH
1 Smirnoff Ice 1 pt. 8 oz. clear glass bottle, 5 cents ME, 10 cents (MI is closer but still not worth the dime)
1 Richard’s Wild Irish Rose-Red 750 ml. Clear glass bottle (enough to share!)
1 Steel Reserve 211, 40 oz. clear glass bottle (A Buzz In Every Bottle)
1 Dairymen’s Iced Tea ½ gal. white translucent plastic bottle, 2 HDPE (a sign of a truly mild winter)
Thursday 4 PM
1 Orloff Vodka 375 ml.(better part of the neighborhood) clear plastic bottle, 1 PETE
1 Montebello Original Long Island Iced Tea Cocktail 200 ml. clear glass bottle. (I’m glad they mentioned “cocktail” in there. It would be hard to get 42 proof out of Iced Tea. Wait a minute—about that Dairymen’s listing above?) In the tiniest lettering yet the surgeon general warns pregnant women not to drink this because it “may” cause birth defects, and others—presumably anybody not a pregnant woman—are told the product “may impair” a person’s ability to drive or to operate machinery—as if driving is not operating machinery.
1 Hawaiian Punch Fruit Juicy Red, non-carbonated, caffeine free, 12 oz. aluminum can. “Original Fruit Juice,” they claim, “color and flavor added,” possibly to make the tasteless beige liquid saleable.
1 Bubba Cola 12 oz. aluminum can. Bottled in Earth City (where, if anywhere, they should know environment)
2 Brake fluid plastic bottles, 2 HDPE (unstoppable shadetrees)
1 Miller High Life 16 oz. aluminum can, flattened.
1 Power Ade Fruit Punch 20 oz. (you will need to go to the bathroom)
1 Busch Light 1 pt. 8 oz. aluminum can ( pristinely placed in the center of my tree lawn after I left for the walk either by a person with a sense of humor or more likely by the extraordinarily young mother who just got back into the car parked at my curb after dropping her child off to a neighbor so she could go shopping?. . visit the father of the baby?. . . who knows?)
1 Cobra Malt Liquor 40 oz clear glass bottle (no walk complete without one)
Ohio City vs. The Heights
“So, whadda ya ‘speck livin’ in da innah city—Shaker Heights, green an’ clean?” some might ask.
But soft, harsh critic. A few years ago I lived on Lee Road just north of Horseshoe Lake and found to my dismay that life in the burbs was hardly neater and tidier even in socially sensitive Cleveland Heights--if you lived along a busy street. Every afternoon I’d walk my dog around the block through a little park between the school and the houses, taking breadbags and newspaper covers for the dog and blue plastic grocery bags for the trash I found along the way.
My own front lawn was often a repository of “40” bottles, malt liquor cans, and plastic pop containers which often only partially drained but sealed tightly as if its imbiber had a torque wrench for a right arm. In later years the trash included the water bottles of presumably health-minded but environmentally insensitive joggers.
Varieties of Detroitus appeared every morning: hubcaps whose retaining rings were too weak to withstand the distorting crunch of nearby potholes, heat shields of catalytic converters or mufflers similarly loosened, torn motor mounts, pseudo-chrome plastic wheel opening décor, and other items too numerous for either JCs Whitney or Penney to catalog. Due to their weight and filth I happily reserved these for return-leg retrieval. Every once in a while I’d bother to pull stuff out of the street before it was mashed hopelessly into the gooey macadam.
Bus stops were favored for foil bags of half-eaten snacks, drink boxes, plastic pop bottles of every size and type. Bus companies could be better neighbors, I thought, if they provided receptacles at the stops or encouraged riders to seal their drinks and dispose of their trash appropriately after they get to their destination. Yet I’ve seen many where they do and the grass is still the preferred drop spot.
I always intended to confront this one lady who just as the bus pulled up regularly placed her half-consumed soda against the streetlight pole that held the bus stop sign. Was she saving it for the next day? Did she think she was giving drink to the thirsty? Or was she so firmly convinced (like most littering types) that garbage literally disappears? I guess I fed her delusion by daily removing the errant beverage/bottle. But, in truth, I can’t say she ever noticed.
Ghetto Garbage vs. Upper Class Litter
Easily thirty years ago I accompanied one of my wife’s work colleagues, on a visit to his parents in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. Don, recently home from the Peace Corps, was an affable and promising young finance graduate whose friendship we had treasured from the start.
His parents were similarly likable, as if cast from some stereotypical Midwestern Norwegians of a Garrison Keillor monologue: his father, tall, stalwart, quick with a wink at the hint of humor; his mother, tall, full and soft in embrace, as chatty as her husband was laconic.
Following the dayload of family time, eating, sleeping, discussing over breakfast the Saturday’s potential for amusement, we settled on spending the afternoon in one of the area’s parks after a brief tour of the neighboring farmland. What puzzled me was that once we parked and decarred, his mom opened the trunk, pulled out an empty black plastic garbage bag, and with a swooping arm motion, filled it with air, and ambled down the path as if this were the most natural thing to do, guests notwithstanding.
Curious I followed her onto the trail and listened to occasional bursts of horticultural commentary interspersed with family banter as she picked up paper, pop cans, bottle tops, bottles, and the like, strewn along her beloved forest trail.
Because at that time in my life I confused feisty with humorous, I acidly inquired, “Why are you doing other people’s work? Surely a custodian eventually cleans the place? If you do it, they’ll only schedule fewer cleanings, and you’ll end up working against yourself.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” she replied without stopping. “I pick up the trash and the place looks better right away. The next person is less likely to litter in a clean area, and more people enjoy it while it’s clean. I really don’t know if they have a custodian, but the park staff has better things to do with their time than pick up garbage.”
I stuffed the complaint and inwardly tsked about the delusions of the elderly.
Comes the Wisdom
But now seeing the world from the vantage point of her years, I regret I didn’t tell her then how she has changed my life (or asked forgiveness for being such a wiseass).
More than once I have come off the less in encounters with smartypantsers in their 40s and 50s who feel as I did that the tactic is ultimately counterproductive. Except that there is a growing band of us who don’t give a damn whether we’re seen as the bagbodies of Shaker Lakes, misguided, senile, or on the way.
I personally berated and hounded the teenaged tokers who littered the little park next to the elementary school with the remains of their blunt building—boxes of Black and Mild, Cigarillo tips—all of which they denied was theirs. They didn’t like my comments but the litter rate dropped notably.
Fully half of what I disposed of as recyclables was trash gleaned from my neighborhood.
I often wondered when I picked up bottles from the tree lawns of South Park Boulevard whether these were hurled in resentment of the rich who live there by people who feel if their own neighborhood was littered with garbage, well, damn it, they’d see that even Shaker Heights bears some burden.
Coming from hard-working industrial folk, whose neighborhoods in Cleveland bordered factories, foundries, and other industrial areas simply because the land there was cheaper to build on, I knew the cleanliness of the neighborhood depended first on the habits of the people who live there, who can bring themselves to stoop down and pick up trash they didn’t place rather than complain “I didn’t drop it. Find the one who put it there.”
When I worked as a sub in the schools the same attitude of unaccountability for refuse showed up there. At the day’s end the halls and stairs would be strewn with candy wrappers, half-drunk pop bottles still spilling their contents, and nobody ever put it there. But the problem exists in virtually every school, every strata, every where.
OK, maybe they’re just young. Maybe it’s what they’ve grown up with. Or maybe I’m just compulsive about neatness. I’m inclined to think everyone would rather be in clean, neat surroundings.
Maybe when the offenders walk by the torn, shiny Doritos bags, they think, “It’s not so bad,” or “What a dump. I’m glad I don’t live here.” And maybe they don’t think at all.
Hell with them. I think. And I live here.
Increase
Your home’s value By
Hundreds, if not thousands, of
$$ dollars $$
No tricks. No cost. Young/old/men/women/children
Anyone can do it. No tools needed.
Any season. Any day. In minutes. Easy.
Clean up the Trash!!!
Removal of beer, pop, liquor, wine bottles (and the occasional dog drop) from your curb, lawn, court increases your home’s value. We all want a clean neighborhood. Who cares who dropped it? Pick it up and INCREASE your A$$ET$.
“If everybody picked up just one piece of garbage, what a clean neighborhood we’d have!”
