There’s always something interesting to see from our apartment window. One of the things we see has to do with “trash management.” On the nearby corner are two dumpsters for common use:
As we’ve mentioned in the past, some people spend most of the day at the dumpster scavenging for recyclables and other things of value:
But during the night, the real action begins. The capacity of the dumpsters is quickly exceeded by the trash from nearby restaurants and shops, so they just dump their trash on the street. The scavengers tear through each bag, further spreading the pile onto the roadway:
Every morning, there is a huge pile of garbage awaiting pickup:
To cope with this, the garbage trucks are designed with a large scoop. They lower the scoop, back into the trash mountain, and start shoveling (click Trash Scooper to see video). Notice that, even while the trash truck is loading up, there is still a person scavenging (on the right):
A local person told us that it is bad luck to throw away trash during the 10 days following Chinese New Year. I can’t imagine how big the pile was on day 11…
That must really be smelly! I think they would be shocked to know we pay $100 every 3 months for someone to dump our 1 trash can.
Wow – that is pretty interesting… I wonder if the incremental cost of the scoops & time for the clean-up exceeds the value of whatever is scavenged.
Actually, it is not cost effective. Our city has several underutilized “trash-to-steam” plants and therefore tries to discourage the scavenging/recycling activities. But the scavenging mentality is so deeply ingrained in a large population that it is hard to break.
They would gladly take your trash, wash the can, and return it to your house for $100 – every day for a year!
The smell of Chinese trash is fresh to my memory even 2.5 years later…definitely a hard one to forget!