I remember my first Spring in Fairfield Iowa several years ago when it came time for the city wide annual “Trash and Brush” pickup.  One day I woke up to find that every resident in the city decided to empty the contents of their garage and basement onto their front lawns.

At first I thought it was due to the heavy rain.  “Oh that sucks!  Looks like their basement flooded.  Oh, and I guess their neighbor’s basement flooded too. “  Two blocks later, “Wow, this whole area must be in some sort of flood zone.”

Of course I started to catch on after driving several blocks (I’m not that slow).

I’ve lived in several metropolitan areas throughout the country and have never lived in a city that encouraged residents to stack piles of trash on their lawns for the city to pick up and take to the dump.  If you had an old couch to get rid of, you either kept it because you were too lazy to haul it away or had no means of taking it to the dump, or if you did have the means to haul a couch away, you’d most likely end up dropping it off at a Salvation Army or thrift store.  But here in Fairfield, you only have to drag it out to your curb for the trash fairies to come by and take it away for you.

I admit that at first I thought that having this service was nice.  That perception changed last Spring when, around the time of the annual trash pickup for the South side of town, I saw the video The Story of Stuff.  And again this Fall, as I drove on the North side of town where residents prepared for their annual trash pickup I thought about the juxtaposition of The Story of Stuff and Fairfield’s annual trash pickup.

On one hand, The Story of Stuff presents a compelling criticism of American consumerism, and how our current habits around use and disposal of “stuff’ is unsustainable.  On the other hand the Fairfield annual trash pick up promotes excess consumerism by encouraging disposal without any reward for recycling, reducing or reusing.   That set of cheap plastic lawn furniture you bought two summers ago?  Just toss it out to the curb and go buy another cheap set at Walmart.

Consider for a moment if there was NO annual trash pickup here in Fairfield.  If you wanted to get rid of a bunch of “stuff”, you’d need to haul it to the dump yourself.  You’d have to pay for the disposal and you’d see first hand the scale of waste management operations, the smell of trash and all the other stuff people are dumping.

Fairfield’s Go-Green Strategic Plan includes objectives to “Establish Fairfield as a model Waste to Energy community / Waste to Resource community”, which is a fancy way of saying they want to minimize waste.  To that end I would propose the goal of eliminating the city wide annual trash pickup, and instead use a fraction of that budget to fund “recycle, reduce, reuse” education and initiatives.

I’m interested to hear what other people think about the annual trash pickup.  Do you think it sends the wrong message?  Would you support eliminating the service entirely?

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