March 28, 2006
There is a man going through the garbage. I can see him, right outside our window and three floors down – I have a perfect view of what he is doing, as if I were a bird on a tree branch watching from above. He is dressed in dirty, old tattered clothes. A navy blue coat, black stocking cap, dark slacks that have seen better days, and obviously old shoes. The garbage truck has already come and gone this morning, but as is usual, there are several grocery sized plastic bags full of garbage lying around on the ground around the dumpster. Some were full and in one piece until this man tore them apart, others already lay twisted and flattened, contents scattered around them. Garbage is scattered around the dumpster in a circle about 20 feet in diameter.
The dumpster for our building looks like this every day. Our building is five stories high and has six entrances. Each entrance opens into a stairway with four apartments on each floor. There are twenty apartments in each stairway, six entrances – I come up with at least 120 apartments in our building. My guess is that there is a minimum of two people living in each apartment and I know that is a low estimate – 240 and more people live in our building. And there are cats and dogs and caged birds and even a couple pet rats and at least one chicken, living in a cage on a balcony. A minimum of two hundred forty people and their pets live in this building and there is one dumpster. One dumpster that is approximately a cubic meter, maybe a bit bigger, and it sits on the ground across the little driveway from our entrance. One lonely little green dumpster. We are fortunate – we have a dumpster.
For the first couple of years we lived here we had to take our garbage out to a dumpster down the street, located in front of a nine-story building. That building has two dumpsters for 9 stories, 6 entrances, approximately 216 apartments, more than 432 people. Two dumpsters for a minimum of 432 people – plus our building as well for many years.
There came a time when people in our building started dumping all of their garbage out in a huge pile beside a cement wall, across the drive way and a little left of our entrance. Huge piles would accumulate until once or twice a week a tractor pulling a big wagon would pull up. Three guys would climb out of the wagon with shovels in hand and commence to shovel all of the garbage up and into the wagon. The tractor and wagon would drive off to the next area and repeat the process. This drove me crazy. I refused to take our garbage out to that pile and continued to take it to the dumpster down the street. Until one day, one of the street cleaners (a woman) stopped me and told me to throw my bag of garbage on the big pile. I reacted in disgust, I admit. “No, it’s not clean!” I said. She realized immediately that I was a foreigner and repeated her instructions again, in very careful Russian so I could understand. I did NOT understand what she was saying. Again I said, “No! It’s dirty, it’s not clean!” She kind of sighed and told me to put the bag in the dumpster. I found out later from a neighbor that the reason we were putting our trash in the big pile was because there were not enough garbage trucks with the right equipment to pick a dumpster up and mechanically pour the garbage into the truck. Men had to come and empty the dumpsters by hand into the trash wagons and it was difficult for them to get the garbage out of the dumpsters quickly. I started throwing my garbage on the big pile and felt guilty every time I did. As an American who believes in keeping our environment clean, throwing bags of trash on the ground is abhorrent to me. Dogs and cats ripped it open and scattered it for many yards all around. How many rats did that garbage attract? Sometimes it would be there for almost a week.
Mel and I left for two weeks vacation and when we returned there was a dumpster for our building! I was very happy. Except the dumpster was located just 10 or 12 yards in front of our entrance, not too far below our window. I wondered how bad the smell would be in the summer. And flies – it was going to attract flies – right under our window. Sigh.
One day I heard arguing outside. This is not an uncommon occurrence and I didn’t pay too much attention until suddenly I heard a loud scraping sound. Screeeeeech. Metal against pavement. More angry yelling between two women. Screeeeeech. And even louder yelling. I looked out the kitchen window and there were two old women standing one on either side of the dumpster yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. The old woman on the right began pulling the dumpster backward to the right. The old woman on the left began pulling as hard as she could to the left. I stood and watched out the window for several minutes, but had to turn back to my cooking. I was laughing inside. Suddenly the screeching sound got really loud so I looked outside and both of the women were now on the same side, pulling with all their might. They pulled that dumpster (with no wheels) three entrances down the street, and then happy with their decision, they left. The next morning the dumpster was back in front of our entrance. There it has remained for the past three years.
The man who was going through the garbage is gone now. Instead, there is an older woman, one of our neighbors, going through the garbage. I know what she is looking for – scraps that she can feed her dog and cats. As the day goes on and the dumpster is filled to overflowing again, several more people will stop by and go through it. I have watched many times and know now what they are looking for. Some people will pull out scraps of food like our neighbor does. (I pray it is not for their human consumption, but have put out stale bread in plastic bags to keep it clean just in case.) Some will sort out bottles, others cardboard and like the man a while ago, some will sort out plastic bottles and certain metals.
I have always wondered what they do with it all. Is there a recycle center somewhere in town? If so, I have no idea where it is. However, I have seen a couple places where you can take empty wine and beer bottles and sell them.
Last night while working on a needlepoint and listening to the news on BBC, I was startled to hear the word “Ukraine” used during an advertisement for an award which was given out recently. I immediately started watching and listening closely. It seems that a British entrepreneur recognized a new problem in Ukraine, brought on by the increasing growth in the economy and standard of living here – the problem of mountains of trash, especially plastic trash, and no way to dispose of it easily. This man found a way to combine several kinds of plastic together and produce a substance that can be formed into roofing tiles. Ukraine has developed this to the point where she can now produce enough to begin exporting them to the UK.
Now when I see a person going through the trash, picking out plastic bottles and putting them into large bags to carry away, I will wonder – are those bottles going to end up on the roof of someone’s new house in Great Britain?
