A terrifying nightmare awoke me about 3 o’clock one Sunday morning. My nose was stuffy and I didn’t feel so good. By awakening, at least I had escaped what was happening to me, but I was also angry. In the dream, I was under arrest. It was in some sort of public building that it happened. I had a handful of chicken scraps from a fast-food restaurant. The only trash can I could find had a sign that read “paper only.” Eager to clean my hands, I had thrown the greasy bones into it. Unfortunately, my crime had been witnessed by a plain-clothes garbage policeman, who showed me his badge.
After reading me my rights, the garbage policeman gave me a long lecture about garbage, recycling and landfills. Though I disagreed with what he said, I dared not talk back for fear of his power. He was actually a nice person, and he said he was going to let me off with making push brooms as a reduced punishment. He showed me a kit and explained how to glue the straws into the wooden block.
Even though I was getting of easy in the dream, I was still outraged and depressed after awakening. The fact is, I thought as I struggled to get back to sleep, a growing number of businessmen convicted of polluting are actually doing time in prisons nowadays. While the government is failing in its role as protector from murder, robbery and violent crimes, the Feds are busy outlawing trivial offenses. Law-enforcement resources are wasted and overextended in pursuit of goals that are sometimes outside the scope of any criminal-justice system.
I became leery years ago after being reprimanded by letter from the City of Bishop, Texas. To avoid leaving my own garbage can at the curbside while away for the Christmas holidays, I’d emptied my trash into a public receptacle in a park across the street from my house. Evidently, garbage detectives discovered an envelope with my address and deduced that I was not a picnicker and therefore not legally entitled to use the park’s garbage cans. If it happened again, I’d be fined!
My bad dream didn’t arise out of a vacuum but out of unremitting guilt. Recently enacted laws where I live, in Kearney, Neb., prohibit putting grass clippings, tree cuttings, motor oil and a variety of other common items in the garbage can for city pickup. Several days before my dream, I had become apprehensive when a neighbor explained the new law to me. Having just put a tree branch in my city-provided wheel-cart garbage can, I decided to leave it there, knowingly breaking the law. The garbage-truck driver wouldn’t see it, I thought. He dumps the container using a big hydraulic arm from the truck. And the driver didn’t see it–nevertheless, my crime returned to haunt me in the night.
What was I supposed to do with my tree branch anyway? A friend of mine says he puts his grass clippings down the toilet a few at a time. I’ve read that some offenders pour motor oil down the kitchen sink (perhaps thinking that sewer workers will mistake it for cooking oil and not report it). Responsible people take oil to collection centers, hoping it doesn’t spill in the car on the way. You can’t bum sticks. I now run sticks over with the mower, giving my yard a sort of country look (like it was mowed with a farm tractor).
We take sticks to a pile at the landfill, where they’ll be burned. But I don’t like to go there. It looks too easy to get a flat tire or to get stuck in the mud. On weekends, families reluctantly trudge in with their obligatory offerings.
How did the landfill get to be such holy ground, I wondered, as I lay sleepless? Out here, land is not scarce. When Scientific American featured a night satellite photo of the earth, populous places glowed like lamps. Kearney and its vicinity were dark as oceans. There remains plenty of space for future landfills around this area–and all over America–that would be cost-efficient ways of dealing with waste. Garbage disposal is as vital to civilization as running water. Some zealous “savers of the earth” shower contempt on other mortal garbage makers as being wanton and willful destroyers of the planet. By inhibiting decomposition, landfills help in the fight against global warming.
Except for aluminum cans, steel and cardboard, recycling is not generally economical. My friends who thought mandatory recycling would lead to a profitable market for plastic bottles were mistaken. Plastic and newsprint prices have plummeted as supplies have increased, so that municipalities cannot even cover collection costs by selling them. It costs almost twice as much as the scrap value to process a ton of the average assortment of household recyclables. I’ve read that much of the paper and plastic collected for recycling ends up dumped in landfills.
The environmentalists really ought to speak up on my behalf-particularly those who seriously proposed that the government grow vast acreages of trees in order to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. After maturity, the trees would have to be preserved from decomposing; otherwise carbon dioxide would rise into the air. Why not preserve grass clippings and tree cuttings instead? University of Arizona archeologist William Rathje has found, by digging through old landfills, that the garbage is hardly decomposing-newspapers 40 years old remain readable. Every sort of carbon-based waste should be sent to the landfill. By preserving this waste we prevent carbon dioxide from escaping into the atmosphere and adding to the greenhouse effect.
I finally did fall back to sleep. I drifted into a peaceful disgust. Society no longer tries very hard to protect me from violent crime. Instead, it creates a new snare for my foot. It’s hard to obey the rule. But I’m a man of conscience. I don’t think I’ll ever again put a stick in the trash and risk another night of terror at the hands of the garbage police.
