Fun At the Dump

Turkey Tracks: September 14, 2021

Fun At The Dump

The fancy name for our recycling center is the ”Transfer Station.” Info about it can also be found online at ”Mid-Coast Solid Waste. But most I know call this place ”the tip” or “the dump.”

Aside from how ”it” gets identified, I’ve always been interested in how it works. And it seems to me that it is recycling and waste management at its best. One can take most anything one wants to get rid of to this place. It has landfill sites for construction waste, old furniture, yard waste, metal—you name it. It has sites for old appliances. It has sites for old computers and other products produced by the technology industry. And in the main recycling bins, we can place various kinds of plastic items, glass items, bottles and cans with rebates, and all kinds of paper items. Newspaper, cardboard, boxboard/mail, and many kinds of plastic, for instance, all have their own bins.

The above bins handle dry trash, range in size, and are metal, with the largest of these being the shape of railroad cars, though not quite as large. I’ve seen how a lift moves these metal containers which are lined up at the beginning of the dump.

But the grand-daddy of the big metal bins are where we throw the yellow bags we can fill with whatever garbage we have, but also with odd items that don’t fit into the above dry bins, but do fit into the yellow bags. There is one bin dedicated to items that don’t fit into the yellow bags.

Items in these bins get compressed by a kind of hydraulic pressing machine that makes a lot of noise when operated.

But, how do all of these bins get moved to where they go when they leave the dump?

I got my answer this past week when I saw how one of the bins got put on a ”transfer” truck where the truck bed was obviously designed for this task.

I stopped the car (the road was blocked by the front of the truck anyway) and took these videos.

I took three videos that showed the whole process—so I could make the process shorter for you to see.

Then feeling really good about having a trash-free garage and learning something new, I went home, fired up the grill, and made this late lunch of grilled lamb chops and stir-fried veggies:

I often grill something for lunch. It’s quite easy to fire up the grill as it is right outside my kitchen door. And it’s easy to make a quick stir fry.

It was delicious!