Trash Day

It’s garbage day. Just like every other Tuesday. At least it’s trash day for my neighborhood. The entire neighborhood is told when to have their trash out on the curb.  And everyone complies. We agree to the days on which we can put our trash out, and we agree on what we can and cannot throw out. But does anyone really monitor what we throw out? I think about this as I bundle up my trash.

Everyone bundles all the things they don’t want into plastic bags. Sometimes we put them in containers. Sometimes loose bags are accepted (on bulk pickup days). Today was not a loose container day.  As the darkness of night faded away, all these things I don’t want in the house are poured and stuffed into their plastic wraps. I laugh quietly as I further stuff the bags into the large containers and put them by the curb. It’s still early and pretty dark out.  I don’t think anyone else is around to even observe the moment.

As some point, a truck is going to come by and scoop up the bins and dump them into a larger bin. It will move its way down the street, adding everyone’s crap together. These trucks are pretty advanced now, and an automated arm does the heavy lifting, so a human won’t even have any idea how heavy (or light) my trash is compared to others. My trash mixes in with hundreds of others. It gets compacted down. Everything gets crunched down. Everything gets smashed into smaller mixed pieces. Pieces mix together into unidentifiable collections of crap.

Then the truck eventually will make its way off to some plant. Other trucks all meet together. The entire city of compacted parts and pieces mixes together. Mixing, smashing, breaking, and further away from me it all goes.  I wonder when the trash becomes untraceable. Can anyone find out what I’ve thrown away? Once trash is gone from the house, is it gone forever? Once the bags hit the truck, who could know what is my trash versus my neighbors? I’m not sure if anyone could do that, but I guess it’s possible. Will anyone go through my trash? Or is it finally gone forever?