City Living: Trash Day

So here we are in what many say is a "second tier city" -- not one of the biggest cities but definitely not a town. Trash day is once a week, with recycling every other week. The recycling bins are great -- nice, big, hearty plastic bins on wheels that the truck just comes along and picks up and dumps and moves on. It's amazing to watch how quickly they can recycle two weeks worth of our recyclables (and the bin is ALWAYS full to the brim!).


Now, what about the trash cans? We have a metal can that we line each week with a plastic bag -- this keeps things nice and clean. When we put our can out on the curb, we tie off the bag so the trash man can simply lift the bag out of the can and toss the bag (and all our week's trash) into the big truck. Sounds simple, easy, neat -- doesn't it?


But does our trash man do this?

Apparently, our trash man feels the need to fling our can onto the street after it's empty .... with a plastic can, this is not too bad an idea as the cans are a bit flexible and they bounce rather than crunch.

But this is what happened yesterday when our trash man decided to fling our metal can:


You'd think a car or truck had hit our can -- but I can state for a fact that this was not done by a car or truck but by our trash man as I was home when the trash man cometh and this is how he left it!

Why can't our City Trash just give us cans like the recycle bins? We certainly pay enough in city and county taxes for the weekly chance to have our bins bouncing all over the street. This would save the trash truck lots of time too as they have the mechancial arm to pick-up, dump, drop all in one fell swoop!


BTW, we HAVE to have a metal can because in our "second tier city" we can't kill the squirrels which are so hungry they gnaw through the plastic cans and into the garbage bags ... not a pretty sight.




But our squirrel problem will be the subject of a long post at a later date -- I have a strategy up my sleeve to rid my household of the dreaded squirrels!