Day #20/31: Before/After

DAY #20: BEFORE/AFTER

Before: This situation makes me a little angry. When I moved into my apartment building (in the background of this photo) back in June, we had a fully functioning, if frequently overflowing, garbage dumpster. Only one- this sad little number in the photo, to service all of the 48 units in the building. Granted, when I say “fully functioning” I do mean with a side and a bottom. The resident’s sloppiness was a bit disappointing in that if full garbage bag was tossed and missed its mark, few would make the effort to correct the error. That issue aside, we had a dumpster that worked. It was emptied with some measure of regularity and that was that. Then, one day in October, someone lit a fire in the dumpster. I wasn’t home at the time, but figure if I was that the toxic fumes would have made my apartment smell wonderful. The fire caused the weakness and eventual breakthrough of the side of the dumpster. It is a little difficult to make out from this angle, but if you look at the gold bag inside the dumpster, you can see that you are looking through the side of the container (which is lying on its side) towards the top (on the left side). The actual tipping over and disappearance of the bottom of the container would come about 2 weeks later in the beginning of November. Sadly, about that same time the garbage collection ceased and the container overflowed without limit.

After: In early December, before the first snows, the dumpster was completely removed with no replacement in sight. Residents just started to drop their household garbage on the ground across the dirt road from our building, creating a makeshift landfill, complete with scavenging animals and wind strewn plastic bags. As time went on, the scene became desperate and in January I wrote a letter to and met with the mayor to alert him of this hazardous condition and hoped that he could help me to make something happen. Basically, he told me that the dumpster situation at my building was not under his administrations jurisdiction, but that he would do what he could to help me. On March 10, 2012, a brand new garbage dumpster was delivered for us to use. Unfortunately, the garbage on the ground is still there and I will be interested to see how, when, or if that is addressed. Surely it will smell great in summer. 

Parenthetically, I never once, dumped my garbage in the pile across the road. Instead, every single time, I walked my bags of garbage to the nearest, easily accessible dumpster for proper disposal. I wish everyone else had done the same.