#37 - A Shift at the Local Transfer Station (a.k.a. the Dump)

The above pictures shows the task we faced yesterday.  While it may look like a truck full of garbage, it's not.  It is recycling. Semantics??  Maybe.

What the heck am I talking about anyway, you ask?  Here's the scoop. Aubrey's choir class has a trip to Orlando planned for April.  We were contacted by a local garbage company with a super simple fundraising opportunity.  They needed to determine the break-down  '(by % of total weight) of their recycling by material type: glass, plastics, cardboard, newspaper, etc.  To do this they were looking for about 25 able-bodied individual to spend a Saturday morning literally sorting through tons of recycling and depositing each item into the appropriate dumpster.  Who couldn't say no?  Seriously, it was a great opportunity for the students to earn some easy money for their trip.  Except that, in our case, the student actually had a basketball game in Denver, so mom and dad inherited the "opportunity" to earn money for her.

It was actually a fairly interesting project.  Bit by bit they would dump a pile out of the truck and we would sort it.  We had individual dumpters for glass, plastic #1, plastic #2, plastics #3-7, steel cans, aluminum cans, cardboard, newspaper and other papers.  Remember that I said this was "recycling" and not "garbage?"  Well, apparently many people take a very liberal approach to recycling.  We quickly decided we would hold a contest for the most interesting item found.  Among the contenders were: a butane lighter shaped like a mini M16 rifle, a pair of boxer shorts, a Blackberry holder, and a half-eaten corn dog. We decided that the winning item was a pair of handcuffs!  Additionally, it was fun to look through some of the legitimate recyclables: old day-planners, lots of Christmas cards, student's school work and an empty IV bag. Here's a shot of us at work.

The kids and parents all had a great attitude. The weather was wonderful, and we all learned a bit about recycling. Here are a few tidbits I learned:

• The big money in recycling comes from aluminum. A dumpster full of aluminum cans nets about $800-$900.
• Brown glass is worth more than any other color.
• The most common recyclable, by far, is cardboard. We filled a dumpster to overflowing and hand to start another one, while the glass, plastics, steel, and aluminum weren't even close to being a quarter full.
• The recycling is normally shipped to Boulder to be sorted.  However, the company is building a new facility in Colorado Springs which will sort the recycling automatically.
• In Colorado Springs the two most popular beers are Coors Light and Bud Light, and Coke is more popular then Pepsi.

Now, as if sorting recycling isn't exciting enough as a new adventure, buckle your seatbelts....guess what else I got to do?!?!?!  I got to drive a skid steer loader!! How cool is that?  As I brainstormed in the past about my 40 new adventures, I often thought that it would be awesome to drive a heavy construction machine. However, I don't know anyone in the construction field, so I figured that would an experience that would not come to fruition this year.  You can imagine my excitement when they pulled out the skid steer loader yesterday to scoop us loads of "other paper" after everything had been sorted out of it. I explained my 40 new adventures goal,  the owner (did I mention we went to church with him for years), graciously let me take her for a spin.  It was kind of like driving a souped up grocery cart (well, at least the way the steering worked was similar to a grocery cart).  I successfully backed up the loader (wow), hauled the load to the designated dumpster, raised the "scoop" and dumped it into the dumpster.  I then lowered the scoop, and drove the loader back to the recycling pile.  My driving was about as smooth as Victoria's driving on a stick-shift, but hey, I didn't crash!  It was a blast.

We worked for 4 hours and we didn't still didn't get the entire truck sorted. Still, they were able to get a good idea of what their break-down is.

I have "stay tuned" story that, if it turns out the way we hope, is worthy of a newspaper article.  I will give the Cliff Notes version. We noticed some rolled up posters in the "other paper" dumpster. We sent Craig dumpster diving to pul them out. We unrolled them, and they were some nice posters of whales.  I thought maybe one of the other school teachers would like them. I got home and realized they were signed Wyland posters!  http://www.wyland.com/ I looked on Ebay to see what a signed Wyland poster goes for. There were two listings for such---one with a Buy Now price of $299, and the other for $500!  Wow!  How could would that be if our posters were worth anything near that. I am going to call a Wyland Gallery on Monday and see if we can get a quick estiamte of their value. One is from 1985 and the other from 1990. It would sure be nice to make a few hundred extra bucks to donate to the trip fund. BTW, there were also posters of Bo Derek and the classic Farrah Fawcett poster!   It just goes to show that the old saying is true: "One man's recycling is another man's treasure!"