The Trash I Detest--Recycle's The Best

Every Friday green trucks come around our neighborhood to collect voluntary donations. I’m used to receiving phone calls asking for contributions, and occasionally a checker in the grocery store will ask me if I would like to make a donation to one of the local hospitals. But the trucks come unannounced, whisk up the large plastic receptacle containing your donation and dump it into the silo attached to their back.

An important item to remember is that the green trucks come by your house only one day a week and at a certain hour. If you have amassed a large number of donations into your receptacles and haven’t transported them to the curb before Hector Collector makes the rounds, you’ll be drenched with the stench until he comes around the following week. Worse yet, as other donations accumulate, there will be no empty space to amalgamate your collective collections. You will have to convey them yourself to the donation center. What I’m saying is: DON’T FORGET TO PUT OUT THE BIN BEFORE THE GREEN TRUCK COMES BY! (like I did). Or you will have to live with the odor and rubbish all week.

One week stands out above all the rest in my mind. It was the week where a substantial number of contributions had been amassed in the donation bins at the side of the house. Being the day before the green machine customarily traipsed around our block, I made an earlier cut of the lawn than usual so I could introduce the grass cuttings into the green receptacle and place it, along with the blue one, out for collection before the arrival of the motorized offal eater (garbage truck) the next morning. I shook the lawn catcher aggressively, expelling the grass directly into the garbage container, which was already overloaded with the normal and customary donations gathered up to now. Dusk came, then dark, sleep, then the morning after. The morning after was Hector Collector’s day. He usually came to visit our home at about 10 a.m.

It’s not unusual to roll out the red carpet to welcome visitors. I was just ready to roll mine out when I saw that my shuttle service was late. I was the shuttler. I quick lanced myself into the front seat of the car, and with the shutlee already in place on the passenger side, turned the key over and hastened off to take her to work. After dropping the shutlee off at her workstation, I headed homeward.

My shuttle service passes by a grocery store on its route to my daughters’ work. When I passed by it this time I remembered that we were out of milk and breakfast cereal, so I stopped, rushed in, purchased the two items and started to rush out when I ran into an old friend at the door. I hadn’t seen him for a long time. We chatted a little and got caught up on things. I realized the time was getting short, so excused myself, got into the car and began to head homeward. As I sat down in the front seat, my wristwatch made the beep-beep sound. It just advanced to the next hour straight up. The number 10 passed before my eyes. A subterranean low, ‘OH NO! welled up within me. Would I make it home in time?

As luck would have it, I made the turn onto our street only to see the ill-fated vehicle driving slowly away from my house in the opposite direction. The signs of its passing were evident:
My twin bins were good friends. They liked playing together, they always ate together. They even slept together. And the neighbors’ were too. Even though it was early in the morning, the neighbors’ bins had decided, or had been persuaded by Hector, to have an early nap. Yup! They were both snoozing flat on the ground…an indication that they had heaved up everything they had inside and because of that strenuous effort, needed to recuperate some strength for the following week.

I looked at the neighbors’ bins. Then I looked over to the side of my garage and saw my green and blue buddies standing next to each other, looking like they had just eaten the fatted calf for breakfast. You talk about overstuffed and bloated! In everyday English without mincing words...I missed the trucks! I would have to live with my bloated friends and their exhilarating odor for a week now until the next Friday.

There was something that added a special fragrance to green ones’ innards. I learned that one should never dump the cut grass directly into the garbage bin without putting it into a large plastic trash bag first. But now that I think about it, that might be an optional way to create feasible fossil fuel. The fumes are powerful. Powerful enough to propel an automobile? Who knows? Maybe.

I have now changed my garbage receptacle procedure. After I escort the bins back to their during-the-week home at the side of the garage, I take the red carpet I bought specifically for this important event and ‘roll it out’ from their home on the side of the garage to the temporary launching pad by the curb. I then escort the bins over the red carpet back to their launching pad by the curb and leave them there all week. I have never missed the truck again. There are lots of flowers growing right by the bins, because the truck always spills some of the garbage as he picks it up and dumps it. The grass cuttings and other rubbish make a wonderful compost. I probably have the best looking flowers on my block!