Community Building at the Transfer Station:
Definitely Not Your Father’s Dump

By Mark Marony

Given the fact that the world’s first recorded landfill dates back to 3000 B.C., in the Cretan capital of Knossos, it is astonishing that the world’s preferred way of disposing of its trash has remained relatively unchanged until the most recent decades. Certainly, evidence of progress has popped up during those 5,000 years: Turkey is reported to have begun the recycling of marble facades for use as grave markers in 1000 AD; Japan began recycling waste paper in 1031; on our own soil, early patriots melted down a statue of King George III to make bullets; and as early as 1874, the city of Baltimore introduced curbside recycling. Still, these pockets of progress were isolated and stagnate. While it took the world less that 7 years to get to the moon after John F. Kennedy’s famous “We choose to go to the moon” speech, it has taken 5 millennia to get to the recycling center. Arguably, though, when change came, it came fast.

As my son Ethan and I sort through our recyclables in preparation for our weekly trip to “The Dump,” I recall a time in the Mid-Seventies, when my own father introduced me to this ages-old parent-child bonding ritual of disposing of the family garbage. We would unload the likes of corroded car batteries, flaking asbestos insulation, and rusted half-full cans of latex paint tinted the color of Saffron Gold, or Avocado Dream into a massive pit that seemed to undulate under the weight of an ever-growing throw-away 20th Century lifestyle. In fact, we made a game out of it, challenging each other’s manliness to see who could rocket their little package of consumer-based carcinogens the farthest. As we hurled fluorescent tubes like javelins over heaps of household refuse with the half-life of plutonium, my father put his arm around my shoulder, as if to say, “One day, son - when you’re a man - you’ll bring your own son to the dump.” And, he would have been right. Decades later, hundreds of miles away, and light years ahead in terms of our understanding our impact on the health of this planet, I am bringing my son to the dump. But this isn’t my father’s dump, that’s for sure.

While a few rogue landfills like that in Hartford County, Maryland continue to operate in violation of environmental laws, in most communities around our nation, including my own, the term “dump” no longer refers solely to a landfill where a wide variety of refuse is dumped indiscreetly into a hole and covered over. Certainly the designed function of our town dump is to serve as a transfer station, where recyclables are sorted, non-recyclables are collected, and the whole orderly lot is shipped off to be burned in a low-emissions incinerator, or to be reincarnated into the cardboard packaging for my son’s favorite organic macaroni & cheese, or the plastic bottle that my wife’s preferred tea tree oil shampoo comes in. But our dump is much more than that. As our town is a small town where recycling is mandatory, and curbside pick-up is not readily available, the dump is the only place where virtually every resident frequents on at least a semi-weekly basis. In a way that the landfill of my father never could be, with its wide-open lay out which gave each father/son pair plenty of room to launch their refuse without running the risk of having to rub elbows with others, our town dump is, in fact, the social center of our community.

Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, the residents of my town converge upon our transfer station-cum-community center to recycle the packaging that so much of their lives comes in. And, perhaps with equal importance, to connect with their neighbors. Side by side, while tossing beer bottles and baby food jars into the same hopper, a student and a college professor discuss the Red Sox’ pitching deficit. While unloading past issues of Easy Rider and Better Homes and Gardens, a local mechanic and a young housewife share their views on the latest town referendum. And in between trying on “previously worn” sweaters and mud boots down in the Swap Shop, a senior pastor invites a much-pierced and brightly tattooed woman to next week’s ham & bean supper. It is here where you find out what time the voting station opens. It is here where you exchange your already-read Tom Clancy books, for those Robert Ludlum books that your brother has been raving about. It is here where you find out who’s got the cheapest hay in town, who’s got the best apple crisp recipe, and who can watch your dog over the weekend. Here, the old timers congregate at the tin hopper to trade off personal convictions about politics, sports and religion in the way that their fathers and grand fathers used to do around the pickle barrel at the general store. Here, parents teach their children not only the difference between #1 plastic and #2 plastic - but also the difference between being an impulsive consumer driven by convenience, and being a responsible steward driven by sustainability. Indeed, this most certainly is not my father’s dump. And, with any luck, now that the doors to progress seem to be finally open, the dump that Ethan brings his children to won’t be his father’s dump, either.

Certainly it was a slow start to get us just to this point of environmental and waste management reform. And given the fact that many households still recycle only 25% of the possible 70% of trash that is recyclable, we still have a fair amount of ground to cover. But there is a lot to be said of the power of community; just ask the folks who bring their bottles, bags and brotherly (and sisterly) fellowship to your local transfer station.

If only Kennedy had chosen to go to the recycling center instead of the moon, Neil Armstrong might have said his immortal words, “One small step for man; one giant leap for man-kind,” from atop a trash heap at the massive Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island! Aahh - if only.