Refuse Collection

The cars came once a fortnight to collect our plastic, paper and refuse. Every week there was a car. One week it was plastic and paper, a service financed by us taxpayers and the other week it was refuse which was liable to costs. In addition every household could ask for a special service once a year to collect anything bulky you wanted to do away with like old pieces of furniture without paying extra for it. My wife often complained about the increasing additional costs particularly of our dust bin and electricity: If they go on charging us more like that we won’t be able to afford anything in the future. Then she added ironically: One day we might even be charged for the dirty air we breathe.

I took this issue to heart and I was thinking hard of solving the problem by not enlisting the refuse collection service anymore but then I found out it was not possible. So I thought of a way of reducing the number of collections in order to save money. I began putting part of our refuse in the bags for plastic and paper. I hid it in the middle and sometimes I put it in an extra plastic bag so that they couldn’t see it. I also tried to dump part of the refuse in outlying areas. This was nothing new to me for I had already done it when I was still married to my first wife. One day we took our refuse to some lonely place outside the city and dumped it there. I also learned how to reduce the size of refuse by crushing it or breaking it into small pieces. I bought special tools for that. You could say I was now a little expert.

I didn’t want to pay money for any extras which were sometimes even higher than the mortgage instalments on our terraced house. I even stopped paying for peeing in the coffee shops I went to. The poor women sitting in front of the toilets looked angrily at me and must have taken me for very stingy. I was not that tight-fisted at all but for me it was a matter of principle.

Nobody found out what I had been doing although I placed a few bags in front of our house when the collection day for paper and plastic came. I felt encouraged to continue. I also took part of our refuse with me whenever I left the house to dump it in special boxes for litter. In addition I decided to throw away anything I found in our neighbors’ gardens from the right and the left. Of course I knew when they were not at home or on holiday. I broke them and put them in the bags.

Our waste was nearly everywhere now until my wife caught me one day. She lost her nerves: What are you doing there? She bellowed with rage. I was wondering why our dust bin never gets full. She threatened she would ask for divorce if I did it again. She said: You are held a prisoner in your mind and will never be able to get out. I didn’t understand what she meant but then she added: You are f-ed up and mentally can’t be held responsible for your actions. I timidly said: This is only compost. You can even throw it in somebody’s garden.

Oddly the dustmen didn’t bother much about the bad smell in the bags, maybe because they were used to it or maybe they were now insensitive to the smell. Anyway I knew these people separated everything we threw away. They had placed banks for everything like empty bottles or old clothes but in the end they were fooling us and themselves for they dumped it in some landfills outside the city. This was at least what the newspapers were writing.

To be continued

Jamshid
Bremen, 26 July 2008

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