Refuse Collectors: Talking Trash
by Charles G. McGuigan 10.2006
It’s always struck me as odd that people who perform the most vital services are often paid the least—firefighters, police, teachers, and refuse collectors. While the sleaziest and least productive members of society, the blood-sucking leaches, lobbyists and their kindred, are carting off cash in barrels. It makes no sense. Without teachers, refuse collectors, firefighters and police, society would come apart quickly at the seams and everywhere else. We’d have a mass of the lawless and the uneducated (And I’m not talking about Congress here). Who would put out our fires? Who would haul away our trash?
Let’s talk trash for a minute. Every American throws away just under five pounds of trash each day—which works out to almost one ton a year for all of us. Thirty-five percent of this trash is paper (think of junk mail, cereal boxes, newspapers, this magazine); a little over 12 percent is lawn trimmings; just under 12 percent is food scraps; 11 percent is plastic; eight percent is metal; five percent is glass; and almost six percent is wood (though I can’t remember the last time I threw out a piece of wood, it seems sacrilegious). In places with dense populations like New York City, those numbers add up fast. In just one week during a sanitation workers strike back in 1968, uncollected garbage quickly piled up on streets and alleyways, sometimes reaching second story windows. In a matter of days the Big Apple seemed rotten to core, had become a landfill, infested with rats and roaches and diseases too numerous to itemize.
Hoisting 6 Tons A Day
In Henrico County, every week, in every conceivable kind of weather, a herd of 11 packer trucks rove the streets of subdivisions like large pachyderms each one ingesting about 12 tons of garbage from approximately 700 households before thundering off to the landfill where they regurgitate their load and start afresh.
Here in an office at the Solid Waste Division of Henrico’s Department of Public Utilities on Woodman Road, there are two brand new garbage cans girded in aluminum straps. Seated next to one of the cans is Tim Torrez, the county’s solid waste engineer.
“I deal with compliance issues at the landfill,” he tells me. “And I also help out with supervision there, and also do the routing of the trucks, making sure everyone has an even workload.”
There are three members in each refuse collection crew—the driver, who also acts as a sort of foreman of the operation, and two laborers on the back of the truck, who hoist the garbage into the gaping mouth of the packer truck. “Each man handles six tons of trash a day,” says Tim. And that trash can be anything from spoiled foods to hazardous waste.
Hazardous Waste
Although most Henrico residents are pretty assiduous about keeping toxic wastes out of their trash, some throw everything and anything into the trash can.
“We have to screen out the trash to ensure that we don’t get hazardous wastes at the landfill on Nuckols Road,” Tim says. “Oil, tires, asbestos, solvents, oil based paints, car batteries. All that is prohibited from going into landfills.” The county has a brochure for residents that details what materials should not be disposed of in a curbside trash can. “At the landfill, we do random inspections,” says Tim. “About two a day now, actually pull a truck aside and look through the trash to make sure there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”
If a back-end-of-the-truck laborer spots the hazardous waste before the trash can is hoisted, he’ll remove the old car battery or paint can and place it back on the side of the road in front of the residence. Henrico makes disposal of hazardous waste for residents relatively easy. “We do a pretty good job giving people an opportunity to recycle these materials,” says Tim. “We take solvents, paints, batteries at our public use areas so we allow them to get rid of their stuff without putting it in the landfill.”
Garbage Juice, Layer Cake
One such recycling opportunity is at the landfill on Nuckols Road. This landfill is quite an operation. It rests on about 140 acres of land, 90 acres of which is blanketed in compressed trash. The remaining 50 acres form a thick buffer around the garbage.
“In the buffer area we plant wildlife grasses,” says Tim. “And that attracts a lot of wildlife. Every time I’m out there I’ll see turkey and deer. It’s a buffer of green space.”
Beyond that buffer the county garbage trucks dump their wastes into cells. Each cell is excavated from the earth to a depth of ten feet and then lined with clay and plastic. Beneath it all is a drainage system.
The drainage system collects the leachate from the garbage so that it does not seep into the groundwater. Leachate is then conveyed to the wastewater treatment plant. “Basically, this leachate is garbage juice. It’s black, nasty stuff,” Tim tells me.
Once the garbage is layered in a cell, a landfill compactor, which weighs 91,000 pounds, runs over it several times to further compress it. “You don’t want to use up the airspace in the landfill with fluffy trash,” Tim says. And on top of each strata of garbage, six inches of soil is spread like icing on layer cake. “That prevents vectors, nuisance animals like buzzards and rats, from feasting on the trash,” says Tim.
Garbage Is Business
All yard wastes and brush are ground up at the landfill, converted into mulch, and free to any county resident. “Residents are getting a real deal on that,” he says. Unlike many county departments, the Division of Solid Waste is self-sustaining. “We don’t get general funds for refuse collection,” Tim explains. “We’re an enterprise fund. We collect service fees and that pays for our operation. Except for the recycling, which is very expensive. For that we get general money.”
Currently, only about one-third of all Henrico County homes enjoy trash collection from the county, but that number is ever-increasing. When Tim first came on board five years ago, 27,000 homes had county garbage collection—today that number has grown to 33,000 households. With new development those number are destined to rise at an accelerated rate. “Which is good for us,” says Tim. “Because we do operate like a business.”
12 Tons Per Truck
I join Bobby Ragsdale in a white county pickup truck and he tells me more about the business of refuse collection. Bobby is a labor foreman for solid waste management and has been with the department for 16 years. He supervises all 43 men in the field, knows their whereabouts at all times, knows the routes like lines on the palms of his hands.
“I’m supervisor for the trash department,” he says. “And I make sure all the trash is gotten up on the all routes for the entire county. I have eleven packer trucks and they hold 12 to 13 tons each.”
Bobby came on as a laborer on the back of a truck for about three years and then moved up as a driver, and five years later was promoted to foreman. He knows every inch of the county, has ridden every route in the east and the west. “I know the county inside out,” he says. “I know the whole county, I know everybody’s route and where everybody is.” What’s more, he understands how grueling the job is.
“People don’t realize how hard this job is until they get on the back of a truck themselves,” he says. “Day in an day out, it’s not an easy job. It’s a hard job, but the guys all work together to get the job done.” And for four years running, Bobby and his team have been recognized by the county for zero complaints. “They help one another out,” he tells me. “If one crew finishes early, they’ll help a crew that’s a little behind. When they get done they’ll pitch in and help out. They work together.”
Community Cleanups
Typically, a refuse collector’s day begins at 6:30 in the morning, and generally wraps us by three in the afternoon. Weather can make the day longer and harsher. “Worst days are the cold days,” says Bobby. “When the cans are frozen and the lids don’t come off and the cans crack. But even if there’s a foot of snow on the ground we’ve got to get the work done.”
Today, with community cleanups and leaf removal, the work week for a refuse collector is often six days. “Most times I work six days a week,” says Bobby. “From March to November we do the cleanups in Lakeside and Highland Springs. You’ve got to roll with the punches.” During those cleanups, on Saturdays and sometimes Sundays as well, the county deploys five packer trucks, seven dump trucks and three backhoes, along with a crew of 33 men. In Lakeside alone, the county hauls off as much as 200 tons of trash to the landfill.
Once the cleanups are completed in November, leaf collection starts. “Then the leaves come and that goes up until February,” Bobby says. “I try to get a vacation when I can get it in. I don’t get too many breaks.”
Cleaning Up After Isabel
He remembers the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel, when his crews hit the streets, cutting up trees and hauling them away. They worked at it for the next three months, until the streets were clean again. “We worked all around the clock removing debris, trees and brush,” he recalls. “Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day until the job was done. We even had some guys who just stayed over, working shift after shift.”
As we pull up Cottage just off Hilliard in Lakeside, Bobby spots one of his packer trucks. “That’s the man you’re going to run with,” he says. “He’s my best man. Name’s James Johnson. He’s been with the county for 40 years.” Bobby trained on the back of James Johnson’s truck. “And he trained me very well.”
Bricks, Mortar & Glass
James is dressed in the standard issue uniform of the Henrico County refuse collector—pale blue shirt, navy blue slacks, a fluorescent yellow vest and thick water-resistant gloves. He’s an amiable man, born and bred in Louisa, which is still his home today.
He tells me that people will throw anything in their garbage cans. “They’re supposed to weigh 50 pounds when full, but some people will throw a cinder block in it,” he tells me. Ten minutes later when he sees one of the back-end men struggling with a garbage can, he invites me to join him in the rear of the truck. He upends the can and its contents of bricks and old mortar spill out onto the shoulder of the street. “See,” he says. “Like I told you,” he adds above the constant ratcheting and whining of the trash compressor on the truck.
One of the worst things someone can dispose of in a garbage can is sheet glass. It penetrates human flesh like the blade of a knife, is sharp-edged as a razor. “You’re supposed to put a note on the can to let us know you got glass in the can so we won’t cut our leg,” says James. “But some people don’t do that.”
A number of years back, as James lifted a sack of trash, a long blade of glass, pierced the leg of his trousers leaving him with a gaping wound on his thigh that required four stitches. Another time, while hauling trash a dagger of glass stabbed him in the stomach. “There were no notes on those bags,” he says.
James and his crew have moved steadily through this last remaining section of Lakeside and are about to call it a day.
“It’s sometimes hard on you,” he says. “In the summertime there are maggots and in the winter you’ve got the snow.”
He adjusts the cap on his head, settles into his seat and then James Johnson says this: “Whether it’s pouring rain or sleeting, even when the snow’s too deep to move in, we got to go. Just like the mailman.”