Don’t BS the Landfill Lady

Granted, donating to three different thrift stores was a big time suck. It wasn’t the only one.

Getting rid of the trash took trips to three dumps. Well, technically, seven. Three dumps, plus rechargeable batteries to the battery store, plastic grocery bags to the grocery store, old eyeglasses to the Lions Club box and old flags to the American Legion. Those last four were pretty easy, so I don’t count them in the tally.

No wonder the earth is buried in trash. They don’t make it easy. Explain to me again why we didn’t just rent a dumpster? Oh, yeah. We’re geeks. Rule followers.

Dump Number One

Cape May County’s main dump is just minutes from the house we sold. That made it convenient. And they accept just about everything; operative words, just about.

We’re old, which does have some advantages; we’re skilled and experienced in a lot of areas. Taking trash to the dump is not one of them. So, when you get there, you’re rather at the mercy of the weighmaster, the lady running the scale.

Most of Cape May County’s Landfill Ladies are really nice, patient and helpful, especially Kate and Lori. A few of them are, let’s just say, not? Although you pray you get one from the former category, you actually learn more from the latter. They let you know how badly you screwed up the paperwork, loud and clear.

The bill of lading, or whatever they call the form, looks simple. Looks are deceiving. To fill it out correctly, you must know, in minute detail, the inner workings and hierarchical chain of command of the Cape May County Municipal Utilities Authority.

And pity the fool who pulls up to the scale without a form. After all, you had plenty of time to fill it out. During the pandemic, sometimes the line to the scale is 20 trucks long. Everybody is looking for stuff to do, so it’s the perfect time to clean out the attic, garage, shed and basement.

That’s why we always have ours filled out and ready, long before we get to the scale. We’re rule followers, remember?

It’s a requirement to cover your load with a tarp, so the weighmaster can’t see what you’re hauling to help you fill out the form. When you get to the scale, the nice ones ask, “Whaddya got?”

Whether you’re killing pandemic idle time or getting rid of most everything you own, you’re cleaning out the attic, garage, shed and basement. The trailer is filled with broken TVs, blown speakers, lamps, plumbing fittings, dogeared teddy bears, decades-silent battery-operated toys, old bedding, curtains, rugs, dented pots and pans, leaky garden hoses, snowman hats, brooms without sticks and sticks without brooms, busted chairs, clothing that went out of style during the Reagan administration and a barrel of Girl Scout project fire starters—14 years’ worth of curated laundry lint, stuffed into toilet paper tubes and wrapped with wax paper. Yeah, they don’t work as well as kerosene, but repurposing your laundry lint makes you feel like you’re helping the environment.

All the crap you’ve been meaning to get around to for the last 16 years. Basically, anything unfit for the thrift store. Everything and the kitchen sink.

The form has 18 categories of trash and recyclables. Trouble is, there’s no checkbox on the form marked hodgepodge miscellany potpourri, which would kind of make sense. If I’d brought my MUA organizational chart to the dump, maybe I would have known this. But I left it in my other trousers.

As people who respect logic, we’d check off each the trailer load represents. Trash, check. Bulky, check. Refrigerator, check. Electronics, check.

“Whaddya got?” Landfill Lady asks.

“A little bit of everything,” comes my standard reply.

Wrong answer. You’re only supposed to check one box. Really? But what if the trailer has 18 things, one from all 18 categories? Not her problem. Make a decision. I’d been going to the dump 16 years and didn’t learn this until the final weeks of year 16. No wonder I’ve had so many Landfill Ladies roll their eyes at me.

After this revelation, for a while, I would check household garbage. That seemed to make sense. It was garbage that came from a household. Until the day I got disciplined on the way out. I guess she was watching us unload on the security cameras.

“That wasn’t garbage!” she said.

“It wasn’t?” came my reply.

“No. What did you have?”

“We’re moving. We’re cleaning out the house. A little bit of everything.”

Wrong answer.

“It’s 13-C. Construction and Demolition!”

“We’re selling the house, not demolishing it.”

Wrong answer.

“13-C!”

You know you’re on thin ice when the Landfill Ladies start ending their sentences with exclamation points.

“OK. Got it. 13-C! Thanks.”

Dump Number Two

Of all the things that weigh down your house, paper has to be among the heaviest. Dacades’ worth of bills, tax records, instruction manuals for long-gone devices, bad photographs, medical records, house records from the house you sold 16 years ago, high school homework, ancient textbooks. Reams upon reams upon reams.

In Cape May County, this is recyclable. Theoretically, anyway. One day, after we’d filled our blue recycling bin and all the neighbors’, too, we ended up with a small box of paper, so we took it to the dump.

In spite of its byzantine scale management scheme, the Cape May County landfill is probably among the nicer ones, as dumps go. It’s organized, it’s easy to navigate, the dumpsters are below vehicle level, so you have gravity on your side when you heave-ho your crap over the side. The reason Beth loves going to the dump. Especially when your stuff breaks when it hits the dumpster.

One day, years ago, I had to get rid of a worn out toilet. Took it to the dump, on a day Beth was working. She was jealous. “Did it break when it hit the dumpster?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“Dammit. I missed it.”

At the risk of sounding absurd, the place is tidy. Each area is well marked with giant signs: trash, metal, oil, batteries, electronics, stumps.

No recycling.

One of the most prominent buildings at the dump is the recycling shed, where actual people use their actual hands to sort all the junk that gets tossed into big blue recycling containers, zipping by on conveyor belts. Paper, plastic, glass, aluminum, tin—and a fair percentage of garbage, like the plastic grocery store bags that people insist on putting their recycling in, even though you can’t recycle plastic bags through the blue bucket.

Beth knocked on the door of the recycling shed. She was told they don’t take recyclables at the dump. Even though there’s a checkbox on the form for it: single stream. That’s not for mere mortals, like us. It’s for big trash trucks owned by cities and towns and hauling companies. That’s who gets to dump their recyclables at the recycling shed.

Each week, after filling every blue recycling bin on the block, we still had more. So we had to make a few trips to Dump Number Two, the municipal garage. Cities and towns are responsible for recycling, and you’re not allowed to skip a step. So we took it to Tuckahoe.

Dump Number Three

What else do you find in sheds and garages? Paint. Lots of it. Dozens if not hundreds of half-empty cans. Interior latex. Exterior latex. Rust-O-Leum. Enamel. Acrylic. Spray paint. And weed killer and bug killer and mildew killer and 100 other noxious chemicals.

So you do some Googling and put on your chemical engineer’s hat. Latex paint, as it turns out, is regular trash. They just want you to let it dry out before dumping it. No problem. The house is empty. I have plenty of weather-protected square footage where I can line up can after open can of latex paint. “Don’t go in the kids’ bedroom, honey, there’s nowhere to step. For the next two months.”

That left the oil-based stuff and creature poisons. I had a boatload. I loaded it into the dump-bound trailer. Fortunately, I got a nice weighmaster that day.

“Do you take paint?” I asked.

“No, sorry. Gotta take it to Transfer,” she said.

Fortunately, by then I’d memorized the MUA organizational chart, so I knew what she was talking about. The Transfer Station in Burleigh. Dump Number Three.

No problem. The trailer was heaped with 13-C!!, so it wasn’t a wasted trip.

So we moved the big bin of nasty chemicals again, some of which had already moved from Palermo to Petersburg. Now, Petersburg to Woodbine. Woodbine to Seaville, in storage. Some day, Seaville to Burleigh.

We finally made time to visit Dump Number Three one Saturday. We found about 24,000 trucks in line. The wait was nearly an hour.

Different setup at Dump Number Three. You pull onto the scale, but the weighmaster is some distance away, in a separate building. So, after waiting in the car, now I wait in line, standing in the rain, praying I get a nice weighmaster.

“Whaddya got?” she asked. Good, so far.

“Paint.”

“How many gallons?”

“Uh, um, ah.” came my reply. I should have expected trick questions, but hadn’t. I didn’t exactly calculate the volume. And I didn’t have my slide rule with me. That went to the thrift store.

Sensing my distress, she asked, “How many gallon cans?” She was patient, but I could tell if I pushed her, she’d quickly go over the edge.

Undaunted, I took the plunge. “What about the spray paint?” I asked.

That released the exclamation points. “You can leave it all in the shed! All I need to know is how many gallon cans you have! That’s how we charge!”

How many gallon cans?! Blast! The one corner of the MUA organizational chart I hadn’t memorized. She directed me to get my car off her scale, count the cans and come back. No problem. I’m no mathematical genius (ask my friends and family) but this, I could handle.

Walking back to the scale, a wave of panic. I wasn’t sure we had any gallon cans. Who buys oil-based paint by the gallon? I knew I had 17,000 pints, quarts, half-pints and spray cans. If I told her I had no gallons, her head would surely explode.

I pulled off the scale and walked to the back of the car to eyeball the pile. There, a single gallon can. Hallelujah!

I returned to the line to wait my turn again. In the rain.

At the window, “One!”

She looked at me a little sideways. I thought I could hear a fuse lighting inside her head. Oh, boy.

“One?”

“Yes, ma’am!” came my reply, without a shred of hesitation. After all, it was true.

With a permit, you can dump trash without a tipping fee. For paint, tires and other things, you have to pay. And people hate, hate, hate paying money to get rid of trash. So they’ll do anything in their power to scam the Landfill Lady. Like bank tellers, retail pharmacists, moms and the school nurse—they possess highly refined bullshit detectors. She knew I was telling the truth. The fuse in her head fizzled out.

“Three dollars.”

Thank God I had exact change. And thank God for that sole gallon can. And it wasn’t even paint. It was roof patch. That tiny detail, I’d decided to leave out of the hostage negotiation.

My mama didn’t raise no dummies.

TO BE CONTINUED

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2020 move