The Trash Container Tango

Many years ago, as a newly minted New York City restaurant manager, I was reviewing the restaurant’s service contracts. I noted what appeared to be the exorbitant monthly trash collection charge. With youthful innocence and moxie, I call the Gagliardi Brothers (name changed to protect the innocent – me) and demanded a reduction in charges.

I was gently told to “no dice,” take it or leave it. So, I cancelled our contract, secure in the knowledge that I would be able to secure an economic alternative. Unbeknownst to me, trash collection, at that time, was controlled by a particular family franchise … family with a capital “F.”

Not only was there no other trash company in the area (sound familiar?), about an hour after cancelling the restaurant’s trash contract, we had an “unscheduled” health department inspection, where the book was thrown at us. We went from an “A” health-rated restaurant to being red-tagged and shut down for 72 hours.

After having to beg to have our trash contract re-instated, we were “delighted” to have services restored at an even higher monthly cost, with charges for non-negotiable items, such as exchanging used dumpsters (never happened) or providing security locks for dumpster area.

That was close to half a century ago. Time may fly, and flies may gather on trash, but trash collection rip-offs remain the same. Over the years, for residential and business, trash collection has been a source of extra income for the trash collection companies and decreased or unacceptable services for the individual or business.

For example, trash companies/local governments used to have a formula to determine how much trash your household or business should generate. If you went over your trash threshold, you guessed it, fines or extra charges. I have seen health care facilities spend a lot of time and the money to do “trash studies” to attempt to reduce trash and avoid fines. Interestingly, I have never lived in a home or worked with a business that was able to effectively reduce trash fines.

Separation of trash, recently elevated to a fine art, is a time-honored method for meting out trash fines. In past years, we just needed to “take our word for it,” in terms of purple container trash winding up in the brown container. Now, we have “photo documentation,” which must exist on a cloud far, far away, as it never seems to be available for viewing.

The list of trash don’ts, and their related fines, goes on and on. Trash cans are too heavy (how exactly do the metal arms hefting the trash containers weigh the containers?) – fine. Grassing cuttings in the glass/metal bin – a fine. Trash container lid not securely closed – a fine. The creativity goes on and on.

In the past, however, the trash fine tango mostly affected the wallet, sort of like the “cost of doing business” or a “trash tithe.” With the introduction of the dreaded “green container,” we are talking about affecting public health and safety and customers’ time and money.

Can you imagine telling your grandmother, 30 or 40 years ago, to store her food trash in her freezer(and purchase a special container to do so), place these trash cubes into a designated container on trash day, purchase special bags if she didn’t just want to throw loose trash into the bin, hope that the food trash was all actually collected, and then take the time to power-wash the food bin with bleach or disinfectant?

Can you imagine grandma attempting to sort trash into four or five bins, hoping that she passed Garbage 101? Grandma may have used eggshells and coffee grinds on the plants, recycled paper, plastic, glass and aluminum foil (why throw it out when you can use it again) and minimized food waste (that stale bread can be used in the soup, but she wasn’t going to spend her time storing and sorting trash in her clean kitchen.

By the way, what is a responsible person supposed to do with green bin leftovers (trash that was left in the bin after collection)? Scoop previously frozen trash out of the bin (yuck) and re-freeze until the next collection day?

Certainly, the green trash couldn’t be placed in a brown, purple or blue bin. What happens if non-green trash is accidentally placed into the green trash bin. Does this one “rotten apple” spoil the whole barrel?

As a side note, bleach, soap and disinfectant are considered “hazardous materials.” Allowing them to drain down the street into storm drains can result in a fine. Over the years businesses and health care facilities have received fines for rinsing their trash cans in alleys or driveways. Businesses and healthcare facilities are instructed to rinse their trash cans “inside, where they can drain into sewer lines.” So, will home trash containers need to be washed in the bathtub to avoid fines and polluting the environment?

As to polluting the environment, how does putting more trucks and plastic containers on the street help to protect the environment? How does having wall-to-wall containers on streets and in alleys provide safe passage?

What has happened to the practice of public health, including safe food handling? People who don’t have the space/time to freeze trash and then place it outside at the moment of pick-up can look forward to disease-carrying creepy crawlers and fliers, as well as two-legged and four-legged guests able to develop and communicate illnesses from contaminated food (which includes discarded food “baking” in our hot weather and the pests that result from trash open to the environment.

It’s difficult to pin down the plans for green trash. One vague plan had the green trash schlepped out to an area near Bakersfield, with the resulting compost “sold to cities.” The mind boggles.

Is it important to attempt to reduce food waste? Of course it is. But the current non-plan seems to be creating, rather than reducing, more trash and safety hazards.

If it’s more income that the trash policymakers are looking for, there has got to be a better way. Endangering neighborhood public health, creating traffic hazards and putting more pollutants into the water and the air doesn’t appear to help any situation.

If it walks like a duck, and in this case, smells like a duck… I may still have the Gagliardi Brothers’ card, if that could be of any use to the city’s trash decision makers.

Nancy Berkoff writes a Beachcomber column on eating healthy foods.