A Day in the Life of Trash

It's a hazardous and dirty job, but Pennsylvania sanitation workers press on, turning trash into cash and seeing a firsthand slice of neigborhood life.

HARRISBURG, PA.

In most localities, one of the services paid for from your hard-earned tax dollar is that someone comes to your residence and picks up your trash. Place the waste in a bin or bag alongside the curb near your home and it’s hauled away, often before the morning alarm rings to wake you up. But do you ever think about where the trash goes?

A lot of municipalities haul garbage to landfills — sometimes at a great distance — and bury it. In this city, members of AFSCME Local 521 (Council 90) haul trash from residents’ homes to be burned into energy for sale.

But between curbside and incinerator are hard-working crews who get to see a “slice of life,” even if it is a little pungent at times.

Working with garbage is a gritty, smelly job. It takes intestinal fortitude to deal with the daily rigors of picking up other people’s trash. But that’s just what haulers like Ramon Zenon and Gary Ross do Monday through Saturday. They work in sweltering heat, freezing cold and driving rain. They both agree, however, “It’s a job and it pays the bills.”

“It’s got its downside. I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life,” says Zenon. “I don’t like the smell. Don’t let anybody fool you and tell you you’ll get used to it; you’ll never get used to it. If it were up to me, I would’ve been born with a silver spoon in my mouth. But I do the job to the best of my ability.”

AFSCME represents sanitation workers from Massachusetts and Maine to Hawaii. “We’ve got a great local and a great president,” adds Zenon of Local 521. “They do everything in their power to make sure we get what we deserve. They’re doing what’s reasonable and beneficial to the unit as a whole.”

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE TRASH. Harrisburg trash haulers crawl out of bed around 4 a.m. to start work at 5. Lee Lippi Jr., director of the city’s bureau of sanitation, says after inspecting their vehicles, trash crews rumble out of the parking lot in a convoy of 10 packer trucks and 2 recycling trucks to begin working their respective routes.

Harrisburg is divided into two sections for garbage pick up — uptown and the “Hill.” Five packers and one recycling truck work one side of town. “We start at the northernmost parts of the city on Monday and work our way down to the south by Friday,” says Lippi.

On Saturday, workers pick up trash from businesses uptown in addition to trash from residences they may have missed due to a mid-week holiday. Lippi says the unit operates another truck on weekday afternoons that lifts trash from dumpsters at state buildings.

Each crew averages nine to 10 tons of trash per day; recycling crews average nearly two tons. There are no limits to the types of trash residents and businesses put out: spoiled foods, stained mattresses, hypodermic needles, pet waste, furniture, glass, toys, clothes, etc. Lippi says haulers are trained not to pick up chemicals; they’ll leave them behind.

A-HAULIN’ WE GO. Zenon and Ross are delayed a couple of hours on this particular day; an inspection of their truck reveals a flat tire. After repairs are made, the two hustle off to one of their routes in Harrisburg’s picturesque, Colonial-style uptown area nestled along the bank of the Susquehanna River. Zenon drives while Ross stands and rides outside on a platform affixed to the back of the truck. On shorter blocks, Zenon remains on the truck as Ross hops on and off to gather the trash and pile it into the vehicle’s hopper. On longer stretches, Zenon parks the truck and assists Ross.

Along the way, they’re met by a youngster of maybe four or five who waits for them on the 2400 block of Penn Street each week. His mom says, “He knew they were coming.” Armed with a miniature toy dump truck, the boy can’t wait for Zenon and Ross to pick up the trash near his yard. When they finish, Zenon blasts the truck’s horn a couple of times and Ross activates the blade that mashes and compresses the trash sitting in the vehicle’s hopper. The boy smiles and the two ride off to the next stop.

Waiting up the street is a customer who’s made a special request for a large load to be picked up. Apparently, he placed his grandmother in a geriatric facility and cleaned out her house. The trash is visible three blocks away. There are at least 100 garbage bags, plus mattresses and furniture. Ross throws a chair into the hopper. In an instant, a rat scats out of the chair, jumps from the hopper and scurries across the street.

TRASH IS POWER. Their route complete, Zenon and Ross haul their quarry to the city’s incineration and steam generation plant that receives solid waste from Harrisburg, other municipalities and independent trash haulers. Harrisburg is one of the few cities in the United States to operate this way.

John Lukens, director of Harrisburg’s Materials, Energy, Recycling and Recovery Facility, says the plant, which operates 24 hours a day, takes the waste and combusts it. The heat is absorbed into a boiler, turned into steam and used to generate electricity.

Lukens says some of the steam is used in-house to preheat the water in the boiler and heat the plant. “The biggest bulk of our steam is used to generate electricity,” he says. “We produce up to eight megawatts of electricity and use about one and a half megawatts in-house. The remaining electricity is sold to Pennsylvania Power and Light Company for 6 cents per kilowatt hour.”

Excess steam is sold to the Bethlehem (Pa.) Steel Corporation and the Harrisburg Steam Works Company. “Steam sales aren’t as lucrative (about $4.30 per 1,000 pounds),” Lukens admits, “but we’re getting something for steam that would otherwise be let out into the atmosphere. Why waste it when you can sell it?”

Lukens says any steam that’s released into the atmosphere isn’t an environmental hazard.

INSIDE THE PLANT. The plant started operating in 1972 and was originally designed primarily for trash disposal, explains Lukens. But the oil embargo of the early 1970s led to an energy crisis and he says the plant became an alternative energy source. “We are one of the oldest resource recovery stations in the United States,” he adds.

Before truck owners unload their waste inside the plant, the vehicles are weighed and charged a fee per ton, says Ed Egenrieder, water quality technician. Inside the plant is a vast “tipping” floor area where the trash is dumped. Trash covers the entire floor and is piled as high as a two-story building. Egenrieder says operations employees work 12-hour shifts and burn 760 tons of trash per day.

Egenrieder explains that a crane lifts the trash from the gargantuan pile and places it into hoppers that feed into the boiler. The boiler runs a firebox temperature of 1,700 degrees. As garbage is fed into the boiler, hot air blows through the large tank and the trash is burned. Inside the boiler are water-filled tubes. The heat is transferred into the water as it passes through the tubes and is turned into steam. The steam is then converted into electricity through a turbine generator. As steam passes through the turbine, it’s condensed into water and goes back into the boilers. This cyclical process operates around the clock.

HAZARDOUS DUTY. When it comes to collecting trash, haulers are working the front line. Without constant vigilance, workers could find themselves in some harrowing situations. Ross says he found out he works in the third most dangerous occupation in the United States.

“Safety is job one,” says Zenon. Neighborhood routes run through areas where “schools are nearby and children run to school. My biggest nightmare is injuring a child.”

The haulers, too, face perils. Zenon has been cut by glass.

“One day a big rat jumped out of the trash into my chest, bounced off and kept going,” Ross recalls. “Another time I got a needle stuck in my glove.”

Lippi says the workers do a pretty good job of staying out of harm’s way. “In my 13 years [at the bureau of sanitation] there was only one sanitation employee that was bitten by a dog in the rear end. I guess he must have been running away,” he chuckles. “Some of the guys bring a box of dog biscuits and treats so the dogs will get to know them.”

TRASHY HUMOR. “We try to make humor out of everything while we’re out here,” says Zenon, whose New York City accent is unmistakable. “One morning I saw a gentleman literally walking around with a shotgun and a rifle. I looked over to my co-workers and said, ‘We’ve still got to get the trash.’ They said, ‘I’m not going to get it — you get it.’ It was really scary. We looked at each other and said we [weren’t] going to take any chances. We called the Harrisburg Police Department and they came out.”

Another morning they were on a route downtown and saw a woman walking down the street in the altogether. Well, almost the altogether. “The only thing she had on was a pair of socks,” says Ross. He says when they see stuff like that, “We just keep on moving.”

The two workers have a healthy, even lighthearted, attitude about their work: “We get a good workout, good exercise,” says Zenon.

Ross agrees. “It’s like being in the gym out here.”

Zenon roars, “The one good thing about this job is there won’t be any layoffs, because there will always be trash.”

By Jimmie Turner