Monday, June 03, 2013

I’m not sure what the attraction of trash is, but it is clearly there.  As a boy, I loved to walk down the alleys and see what goodies the neighbors threw away.  I came home with books and a washing machine and lumber and fencing and bags of screws and nails and who knows what else.  Dad always complained that I was hauling home all that junk, but those pieces of sheet metal and those boards wound up in some project or another.  I took the washing machine apart into all the various components and reproduced the electrical connections on the workbench to figure out how the timer and float and motor and switches all worked together.  Those kinds of experiences helped to make me foolishly fearless in disassembly and repair of almost anything.  Trips to the dump were a fascination for me before the people that run the dumps got so fussy about who could recover materials and reusables from their premises.  When we lived in Japan, both Camp Zama and Atsugi Naval Air Station had dumps that were unattended, and we made many happy trips recovering discarded materials.  I still have logging chains from the Atsugi dump, and we recovered enough lumber to build beds playhouses and a shop and a greenhouse and a swingset.  Pallets were made of teak, so pulling the nails and planing them down left some beautiful wood for special projects.  Even here in Eagle River, the dump can be a place of excitement and mystery.  If you dump on the “face” of the landfill where the bulldozers work, you will see lumber and iron and toys and appliances and everything else you can imagine being buried by the heavy equipment.  They pretend to have a recycling program here, but the very highest level of recycling is reuse, and that is completely ignored.  If a product or material can be reused or repurposed, it doesn’t have to be broken down into component compounds to be of value.  It is already of value.  Fairbanks does public dumping better than most places.  They have lots with dozens of dumpsters surrounding them and a covered area where people can leave objects that they no longer want but that still have some value.  Free for the taking and affordable to all, chairs and toys and playground equipment and tires can all be found there, and if not taken away, the dumpsters are pretty close.  I have brought home pipe and drawer slides and electrical wire and moldings and even a Fisher Price car that the grandkids love.  So why do we as a society stand by and watch as these things are crushed and buried in a landfill while we worry about saving aluminum cans?  My dream would be to have everything entering the dump pass through a conveyor where all the reusables and recyclables would be removed and put in a proper stream, either for sale at a reduced rate or recycled.  Hazardous wastes are handled in such a manner here in Eagle River.  If a reusable container of paint or oil or wax or windex or whatever is dropped off at the facility here, it is put on a shelf that any other patron is free to take home and use up of it what is left.  This is a great service to both donors and reusers, and keeps the waste from going into the landfill or having to be disposed of as a hazardous waste.  What a marvel it would be if that same logic could be applied to solid waste.  Instead, try and “steal” material from the dump and you will be threatened with arrest.  Logic?