my neighbor loves trash

[calimac]

Today is trash pick-up day in our little townhouse community. I put out our garbage and recycling bins last night. This morning I go out to bring in the newspaper at 7:30 and what should I find but a neighbor woman engaged in the heavy exertion of trying to stuff cardboard boxes into my recycle bin. Judging from the way they're overflowing already, compared to how much I'd put in last night, that must have been a lot of boxes.

She's caught. She says something about just trying to get them in there. "Well, as long as they fit," I say dubiously, since the way she's going on, they're not going to fit. "Don't you have your own recycling bin?" No, she says, she doesn't. (I don't know why: the city distributed the current generation of bins just a couple years ago, and there were enough for everyone in the complex.) You could call the city and get one, I say. Yeah, she says, she should probably do that. And considering how many boxes she has, she definitely should. "Please do so," I say, and go back inside.

Should I have gotten angry at this usurpation of my God- and municipal-government-given recycling capacity? I suppose I could discover this morning that there was a bunch of stuff that I forgot to put in the bin last night, and feel rather put out that I'd have to wait till next week to recycle them. But I did put my stuff out last night: it's not as if she were occupying my designated parking space, which wouldn't allow me to use it at all until whenever she decided to leave. (Room is cramped on the inside of the complex, and all of us living inside have reserved spaces. There's plenty of extra space outside on the street.) It does feel inchoately as if my privacy is being violated, but I'm not sure if I could defend that feeling.

I suppose the worst that could happen is that some hypothetical garbage snooper comes to false conclusions about my trash. In an earlier era, we had a separate bin for aluminum cans and glass bottles. We used so few of these that I only put the bin out once every few months, at which time it looked as if we'd just had a big, but actually imaginary, party.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I don't know about up there, but down here it is illegal to put trash in others' bins.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Don't tell anyone, but I myself almost always put my trash in someone else's bin. Not the recycling, I'm scrupulous about that: but because I recycle and/or compost almost everything, I produce so little trash it never seems worth the effort to drag out the wheelie-bin just for the sake of one wee bag. Not when all my neighbours have room in theirs, and it's just garbage, for heaven's sake, and all the bins technically belong to the council anyway. And they all leave their bins out in the alley all week rather than taking 'em in like they're supposed to, and...

And, and, and. My arguments are well-rehearsed, in anticipation of being caught. I feel for your neighbour, exceedingly. (But I wouldn't be squashing an excess of stuff into someone else's bin; for that I'd wheel my own out, as I do with the recycling when it's full. It seems impertinent, to use up all of someone else's space and then some.)

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

I understand the cognitive aggitation. On the one hand, it's all trash and going out, and as long as it is taken away, should it matter? But on the other hand, I think there is still a certain territorial extension between ourselves and our trash until the moment that the designated carters show up to remove it.

I feel weird when I come home during the day and there is a dumpster diver going through our apartment building's recycle bins. On the one hand, the stuff is going to be recycled either way, and the diver probably needs the change he'll (it's usually a guy) get for what he takes from the bin. On the other, the bin is at the back of our building in our parking area, and it kind of creeps me out that there's a stranger back there where few are going to see anything, if he happens to be of dubious character.

As for putting something in someone else's trash bin -- it's kind of weird, yeah. And certainly, to do it to the degree that the proper owner might not be able to add anything themselves, that's a bit much.

But your neighbor? When she could easily get a bin of her own? That rather reeks of laziness. Not so cool at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Several years ago, there had been curbside recycling in my Cleveland neighborhood, but no official bins: items were to be left in blue bags on the treelawn, next to the trash cans. After two years, this was discontinued for reasons of cost -- I think probably because scavengers were traveling the city a half day ahead of the collection schedule, nabbing the more valuable recyclables and leaving the city with no income to offset the collection costs. Now I have to drive the recyclables a dozen blocks to the nearest official collection dumpster at the local park.

-MTD/neb