Taking Out the Trash in Winchester, Massachusetts

My final post in honor of Earth Day: Dilip d'Souza wrote this past February about going to the town dump (otherwise known as the transfer station) in Winchester, Massachusetts, which has no home pickup of garbage.

A short excerpt to tease you into reading the whole thing:

Plastic things here in this large container that is busy compressing them as we toss them in, but plastic bags in this other bin. Paper here, but if you have books take them across the street to that small room, where you can leave them for others to pick up if they want. Don’t leave textbooks, those go over at that other place.

Glass in this large container. Organic waste a little further into the facility, on this conveyor belt that drops it into enormous containers that are periodically trucked away; but take yard waste — leaves and branches and a vast pile of snowed under Christmas trees fronted by a helpful sign that says “Christmas Trees” — across the road. Metal objects in this enclosure. Computer monitors and TV sets in that one. Still usable things you no longer need but somebody else might — strollers, desks, bikes — behind that low fence, where several such are coated with snow.

There are even large containers to take things you want to give to charity — like old clothes to the Salvation Army — with a note explaining how you can claim tax deductions.

[I read a slightly different version of this article in the April 2007 edition of India Currents.]