One man’s trash…

Every year, the city sets up Annual Neighborhood Clean Up Days. Instead of residents hauling trash to the dump, the city comes down our street and hauls it away for us. All we have to do it place the junk at the curb. It’s a great convenience.

The City Annual Neighborhood Clean Up Day (CANCUD) has its own subculture. When all the junk is piled up at curbside, our street experiences a parade of vehicles slowly cruising by. Instead of window shopping, they are gutter shopping…looking for good stuff to take home before the city trucks come by. The guys in this photo are loading up a warped ping pong table.

This whole experience makes me wonder…

1) Until CANCUD is scheduled, where is all this junk sitting? Is it really in my neighbor’s garage, back yard or storage shed? (I know where MY junk was sitting.)

2) Have we stopped taking junk to the dump, knowing that CANCUD is just around the corner? Does CANCUD actually promote clutter, rather than resolve it?

3) What do these people do with crusty old toilets, rusty bicycles, and warped ping pong tables that they cart away?

4) What do they throw away? Is their stuff crustier and rustier, thus making this junk valuable? Who scrounges through their piles?

5) If it is so easy for us to discard these items, then why did we think we needed these things in the first place?

6) How much gasoline is consumed (in total) in this city each year by all the vehicles that circle the blocks in all the neighborhoods? And how much gasoline did we consume going to the store to buy it in the first place?

I never thought about it before, but I realize we all live in a landfill, of one type or another.