Inside City Hall

By Bunny Norville
Municipal Judge

Trash, the rat’s point of view.
Trash is wonderful,
Trash is nice, Trash is loved by rats and mice.
Trash is a delicacy,
It’s known all over the galaxy.
I know, you think I’m crazy, but really I am not,
For you understand, I’m a rat!!!
(By a third grade student.)

Rats and mice may love trash, that smelly, slimy, grimy, dirty stuff. Wonderful, now if they would all stay at the landfills. However, the EPA probably wouldn’t allow that. After all, a landfill would be unsanitary for living beings.

We are not rats or mice. That alone doesn’t make us nice. We are the two-legged animals who make trash out of good stuff. Trash is our leftovers, the stuff we can’t use or otherwise, don’t want anymore. So there are those who make billions of dollars every day, picking up people’s trash. Yes, they do.

In the 1890s, Ham Huizenga, a Dutch immigrant, began hauling garbage at $1.25 a wagon in Chicago. In 1968, his son, Wayne, and two other men founded Waste Management, Inc. and began purchasing smaller garbage collection services across the country. In 1971, Waste Management went public, and by 1972, the company had made 133 acquisitions with $82M in revenue. It had 60,000 commercial and industrial accounts and 600,000 residential customers in 19 states and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In the 1980s, WM acquired Service Corp of America (SCA) to become the largest waste hauler in the country.

Huizenga later sold his part in Waste Management and started Blockbuster. He now owns the Miami Dolphins and the Miami Heat. Needless to say, he’s one of the richest men in the world today.

The City of Munday has contracted with Allied Waste to collect solid waste inside the city limits of Munday.

Solid waste is trash. Residential solid waste means any unwanted or discarded waste materials in a solid, semi-liquid or liquid state.

Munday’s contracted day is Tuesday and collection will not begin before 7 a.m. Trash is usually collected the day after Christmas or Thanksgiving. If collection falls on bad-weather days, it will be rescheduled. A credit will not be issued due to weather conditions.

Munday uses metal bins to collect solid waste. These bins are lifted and emptied mechanically into a special out-fitted truck. Citizens are asked to place their waste in plastic bags strong enough to be lifted by the top without breaking.

Allied drivers have complained several times recently about excessive amounts of building waste inside and thrown around the outside of the bins. When this occurs they will not empty the bins. When materials cannot be bagged or bundled in three-foot lengths, other arrangements need to be worked out to dispose of the waste. Newspapers, magazines, and cardboard will also need to be tied in bundles before disposal.

Large pieces of furniture and appliances should not be placed in the bins. Cardboard boxes must be broken down before they are placed in the bins. Yard waste and grass clippings must be placed in plastic bags or the paper bags sold for that purpose. Do not place loose trimmings into the bin. Tree limbs no longer than three feet are to be strapped together and placed as a bundle into bin.

Other non-allowed items are: chemicals of any kind, pesticides or herbicides, batteries, antifreeze, asbestos, contaminated soils, paint or thinners, drums, untreated medical waste, tires, oil and oil filters, or sludge and liquids.

Allowed items (in plastic bags) include: house-type waste, paper, food wastes, cardboard (bundled), plastic and yard wastes. Dead animals weighing less than ten pounds can be thrown away, if placed in a plastic bag.

Above all, be considerate of others who also use the same bin. Do not use the bin as if it is your private property.

Why you say it: Dead as a doornail
Anything from a withered houseplant to a failed project that is beyond resurrection is likely to be described as being “dead as a doornail.”

Both mechanical and electric doorbells are recent inventions. In earlier centuries, a visitor’s arrival was announced by pounding with a knocker upon a metal plate nailed to the door.

Sometimes it took several heavy blows to attract attention. That meant nails holding the knocking plate suffered a lot of punishment. Repeatedly hit on its head, such a nail had the life pounded out of it so effectively that nothing could be deader.