Trash Talk
Today is Wednesday, which means it is trash day here in Hidden Meadows, or at least on our little hilltop within Hidden Meadows. I don’t make it my business to know the trash pick-up schedule of the local surroundings, though the very visible trash cans at the curb are a dead giveaway, so I suppose I could figure it out if I cared to. In actuality, Thursday is the pick-up day, but Wednesday is the day that we focus on getting the trash organized for pick-up and set out on the curb. I don’t ever recall being so focused on the trash before and I’m not sure if its about where we live, the times we are all living in or that retired people have so much less of a routine to adhere to that the regularity of the trash cycle gives their week some badly needed structure. We have three colors of trash bins that are provided (for a price) by the local waste disposal company, which is called EDCO (Escondido Disposal Company). There is the primary gray can (64 gallons), which is for general trash. There is a recycling blue can (also 64 gallons), which is for a very specific array of cardboard, aluminum, styrofoam, cartons, paper, glass and plastic containers. There are all sorts of restrictions on the specifics of these items that you can/should put into the recycle can. And then there are the green organic recycling cans (which can go up to 96 gallons), and which are used mostly for green waste cuttings from the landscape, but also, now, food waste and food-soiled paper. We have one gray, two blue and four green cans. On a normal week we put out one of each, but on Joventino weeks we put our all four green and if we have had a lot of deliveries (and the attendant cardboard) or some sort of event, like Christmas, we need both blue cans. It’s actually quite a complex program, so I’m glad we are only getting to this requirement now that we are retired and can devote the time to it.
Since we live on our little hilltop, there is an elevation change of perhaps forty feet from the road to the house. That means that getting the cans down and back up the driveway each week, while not an ordeal, is a bit of a production that Kim and I need to coordinate. The gray and blue cans get picked up early in the day and the green cans are apparently considered lower priority and get picked up in the late afternoon. Naturally, that adds to the coordination requirements. We keep the cans on the side and back of the garage, pretty much like everyone else. We all have garbage in our lives with which to deal, but we all tend to want to hide it from one another as one of the perquisite niceties of suburbia. There is also an unwritten set of norms for trash cans. Taking them out early is considered acceptable. That is especially so for the green waste cans since gardeners come on various days of the week and it seems reasonable that homeowners should not have to move those heavy cans with cuttings since the gardeners fill them and place them on the street as part of their duties. But, leaving empty cans on the street too long is definitely frowned upon to some degree. I sense that the unwritten rule is that you have a day to get your cans back in, but to a certain extent that patience factor is influenced by how neatly the garbage men have left your cans on the street. If they are in disarray with lids open and cans askew, there is more silent pressure to get them back out of sight.
These cans are designed for automated pick-up, which means that one guy drives the garbage truck and uses a forked lift to grab and dump the cans into the truck bin and then replacing them where they were found. I have never operated the truck lift device, but I imagine that some drivers stay perfectly still to replace the empty cans exactly where they were removed from while others might drift forward with the truck to preemptively grab the next can before the prior can has finished its descent. I’m no student to trash driver efficiency, but I’m going to bet that some are neater can handlers than others. To make their job easier, we are asked to place cans with their wheels on or abutting the curb with the cans 2 feet apart (I’ve used EDCO for 11 years now and only today learned that can separation request…so I guess it is not a deal-killer).
The amazing thing about EDCO trash pick-up, which is a private company service rather than a municipal service, is that it costs only $79 per month for a residential user and I can’t remember the last time that changed. I estimate that we put out 20 cans per month, which means that we are charged $4 per can, which strikes me as a very reasonable charge for a very necessary service, even though we do all the sorting work. Actually, I am using the royal “we” here since Kim is really the trash commandant of our house. Normally, it is the traditional role of the husband to take out the trash, but there are several reasons that tends to fall to Kim in our household. I understand the desire to blame it on my laziness, which is certainly a credible reason, but it actually goes beyond that. To begin with, the whole recycling cause is very much Kim’s mission. She takes it very seriously and knows exactly what is and isn’t allowed in each can. She prefers that I not make sorting mistakes and thus, prefers to do it herself. The other reason is that in the past three semesters I have had classes on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, so Kim has felt that she should just take responsibility of getting the trash out. We are better at sharing the returning of the cans when emptied. In fact, there is an unwritten rule in our home that I am, for some strange reason, responsible for taking the cans that have been dragged up the driveway, from that spot to the side or back of the garage. I can think of reasons for that protocol, but it really doesn’t matter since I feel it is only fair that I do whatever Kim wants since she is the trash master.
Progressive Insurance has what must be some of the most creative ads on TV these days. One particular series of ads is about Dr. Rick, who is a specialist at helping people not become like their parents. The idea is that we all have to be careful not to get too stodgy or set in our ways too soon in life. I’m not sure how that relates to selling insurance, but the ads are actually quite funny and almost too relatable in that we can probably all see a little of ourselves in these poor misguided souls. One of the ads shows a new homeowner with a row of colored 64 gallon cans out behind his garage, cleaning them diligently with a small scrub brush and getting admonished by Dr. Rick for putting his name and address on his cans with stenciling. The funny thing is that as much as I like the ads, I didn’t find either activity unreasonable. In fact, I would argue that the cans need to be regularly cleaned to keep the garbage smell under control. I’m not sure I would use a scrub brush, but a brisk hosing is certainly a good thing. As for labeling the cans, its not even necessary since all of the cans are numbered and I’m sure EDCO can insure that we all get our own cans back. And even if we don’t, do any of us really care? But the ad is still pretty funny. Trash talk is always funny.