The Trash Heap

On Friday, the 6th of June, which was dearest Tracy's 21st...I was out digging through trash. (Happy Birthday, dear! You is adults now. Takes cares and alway vote carefully, ok?)

First of all, let me say that I didn't know that a trash disposal company other than SembCorp existed in Singapore. It's called Jakob Altvater, which translated roughly from the German is Jacob Oldfather. If you ever see a red rubbish truck labelled SULO, that's they. They're big-time recyclers, though, not the anykind of landfill garbagey stuff. The barn with recycled papers was decent enough--lots of random corrugated boxes and papers about. The barn opposite it had bales of compacted paper stacked to the ceiling. That's about two and a half storeys' worth of recycled paper awaiting transport. It was the barn of plastic and aluminium products that really grabbed our attention. First thing that strikes you is that this barn is filled with a mini-mountain of garbage about 10m high. A worker stood on it as an excavator truck rode into the garbage and used its trough to pile the stuff up even higher (ok, i totally don't know truck terminology). Next, the reason for this operation became clear: yet another red dump truck entered and tipped its stuff all over the floor. An automated chute took up the garbage and conveyed it to a cabin perched above the mess, where workers picked up their assigned trash to dump it into large containers below them.

And this is where my team and I had come to source for cans and PET bottles (which are polyethene bottles, which is just the jargon for your average plastic drink bottles). Why? You'll find out in the months to come. The team (as usual) wore slippers. No matter how many times I ask for people to be wearing shoes when they come out, they still insist that it's alright, despite the fact that we walk into all manner of strange places like recycling plants and scrap yards. There was broken glass all over the floor, in this instance, as the trucks drive over the rubbish all the time. And I know I act the fussy aunt sometimes, but I'd rather that than seeing someone get stitches on the sole of their foot, when it could have been prevented.

Fortunately, the manager of affairs got a friendly PRC dude (he came all the way here to sort trash!) to pick out the stuff we needed. We picked some out from the fringe of the trash mountain, but we couldn't go into the containers for the lack of proper footwear. He was very friendly and helpful--didn't mind one bit, and when we got him a drink at the end he wanted to give it back to us, but Carl left it on the edge of a container for him.

The trash, mind you, was not tame old bottles and cans. If you've ever collected recycled cans and washed them, you'll know that it only takes a week for them to be positively seething with stuff. There were flies everywhere, the smell assailed my consciousness with all the force that a tonne of post-consumer product can muster. Eventually I got used to it, though. I imagine the people who live among the trash heaps in the Phillipines live with a far worse smell. They certainly do not have proper footwear. If only the guilt of allowing people to live in mountains of trash while we accumulate mountains of wealth could assail our senses. How much would we pay then to be free of the smell?