Where does the Lone Ranger take his garbage? To the dump, to the dump, to
the dump, dump, dump.
I swore when I turned 30 I would never go to the dump again. Well, that
landmark birthday is long in my past and I’ve been to the dump plenty of times
since then. I was there yet again last week getting rid yet again of all the
crap my renters leave behind. Even well-intentioned renters kindly abandoned
their ragged mattresses and stained rugs and shattered plastic do-hickeys with
the following qualification: “Oh, Suzy, I thought you could use the broken
dumbbells/stove/particle board stereo cabinets.”
On my most recent trip to the City of Austin landfill off Hwy 183, as I was
admiring the view of the new airport, a city garbage truck pulled up and dumped
an enormous load of bagged leaves. The landfill attendant whipped out his
camera and started taking pictures of the leaf pile. “Artistic shot?” I asked
him. “Nah,” he said, “I’m putting together a presentation for my boss to show
him the amount of leaves that wind up here in the landfill instead of in ‘Dillo
Dirt. See those plastic bags in there? They can’t use it for ‘Dillo Dirt with
plastic in it.” Then I think he said 42,000 pounds of leaves had been dumped
there so far in one day.
‘Dillo Dirt, in case you don’t know, is a compost made with waste water sludge
that makes lawns and landscapes smile. (You can get it at local nurseries.)
‘Dillo Dirt has earned the city an Environmental Excellence Award from the EPA,
naming them number one in the nation for beneficial reuse. I called Phil Tamez,
plant manager at the Hornsby Bend Biosolids Treatment facility where the
compost is made, who gently outlined the problem with plastic in their ‘Dillo
dirt: It’s non-degradable, they don’t have the manpower to separate the plastic
from the load, and their pilot project to try grinding up the plastic into tiny
pieces proved unsuccessful. If you use plastic bags, your leaves wind up taking
up landfill space. If you use paper “craft” bags, about 25cents cents apiece at
grocery stores, your leaves become luscious compost.
Tamez loves compost: “It’s the best thing nature produces.” He loves it so
much he wishes everyone would make their own. “If people make their own they’ll
soon realize the benefits,” he says. You’ll save money on fertilizer and water,
cut down on pollution (Texans spread 5 million pounds of chemical fertilizer
each year, much of which winds up in our creeks, rivers, and aquifers), have
healthier lawns and gardens, and lots of earthworms. Tamez loves worms, too:
“Did you know one earthworm can aerate one ton of earth a year?”
I wonder if I could train them to eat old mattresses?
This article appears in February 14 • 1997 and February 14 • 1997 (Cover).