by David Anderson
Sanitation workers don’t get much credit for picking up after the rest of us. Hauling garbage demands physical and emotional toughness. The crews press on through Ohio’s sweltering hot summers and numbing cold winters. They risk chronic back injury when they wrestle heavy trash containers from the curb to their garbage trucks. The lucky ones avoid serious injury from sharp objects, toxic chemicals, and pressurized canisters. If their luck holds, they will also steer clear of any severe life-threatening traffic accident.
Some Ohio cities have equipped their garbage trucks with robotic arms that hoist and empty large residential trash containers. Analysts claim the robotic arms reduce back injuries but the new technology also reduces the size of the work crews and the number of people employed in sanitation.
In fact, the phrase “sanitation worker” belies the unsanitary nature of the work. Imagine how unpleasant it must be on a hot summer day to handle containers reeking with the stench of rotten meat, fruit, and vegetables mixed with the pungent sour aroma of spoiled milk and sickening sweet odor of half-empty beer cans. Or consider wintertime when leaking garbage bags freeze solid in the trash cans. Even worse, picture the fear produced when luck runs out and a worker jabs a hand on a bag filled with discarded used needles.
Used properly, plastic garbage bags help shield workers from direct contact with refuse. But some people use the bags to throw out dangerous items. Lawn chemicals, asbestos, gasoline, bleach, paints, and solvents all can be sneaked into plastic bags and mixed with “regular” garbage. Even if there is no release or spill from the bags when they’re picked up and tossed into the truck, the crushing force of the truck’s hydraulic trash compactor can break open the bags, spray the contents, and douse the workers.
Many motorists recall being stuck behind a slow-moving garbage truck on its pick-up route. Irritated drivers can endanger life and limb with little concern for those who must jump from trucks to fetch trash. Their impatience increases the possibility of deadly consequences for sanitation workers.
Garbage consists of the junk, refuse, litter, and rubbish we no longer want or need. Sometimes we use the word “garbage” as a pejorative term to label something as worthless or contemptible. Many years ago, my seventh grade math teacher contemptuously announced that those students who failed to pass her course would end up hauling garbage. Sticking people with derogatory labels because of the work they do, dehumanizes and devalues those who pick up after our throw-away society.
Can’t we respect our sanitation workers much as we esteem our mail carriers? One delivers while the other takes away. We can help protect against unwanted and dangerous surprises when we wrap up our garbage for disposal. We can control our impulse to speed up and go around when we’re stuck in slow traffic behind a garbage truck. The care we take will go a long way to ensure safer and healthier working conditions in the sanitation industry!
