No Dumping

Have you ever seen the sign "No Dumping" and wondered why that would be necessary. I never really paid much attention to those signs until recently. After moving to Oklahoma these signs have almost become humorous to us.

First of all we realize that is NOT free to get rid of stuff. Our city is very strict about trash removal and there are not a lot of options for things that don't fit in your "legal" trash cans.

We have been doing some major trimming of branches, bushes, and other vegetation. When we first moved in we had to rent a flat-bed trailer from the base for Adam to haul off our various greenery. As he was driving down the road @ 45 mph with the trailer I think some of the limbs may have blown off in the Oklahoma wind. You may be surprised that Oklahoma had so many trees and that they actually needed trimming, I was. Rich, yet another reason to come visit... trees. :) I digress.

Well, a few weeks ago we were doing a little more trimming and had a dilemma. It was not enough of a load to rent the trailer from base but it was definitely more than what would fit in our two allotted "legal" trash cans. I am thinking this is when illegal dumping becomes an option. So I convinced Adam that we could cram all of these limbs into the back of our car and take them to the transfer station. He was skeptical and said they would never fit. Guess what? We did it. I thought you would like to see a few pictures of this. The kids said that the back seat felt like a jungle. :)

The other reason that I am convinced that people feel compelled to "dump" is the cost. I alluded to this a few paragraphs ago but you have to pay to get rid of things. With our original batch of limbs, we had to actually cut them which was a lot of work. Then we had to rent the trailer, load it, and then when we got to the transfer station we had to pay to get rid of them. Even with all of the limbs crammed into the back of our car we had to pay to dispose of them.

The trip to the transfer station was an educational trip of sorts. We saw some unique things.

As we looked into the backs of all of the trucks waiting in line to dump we thought of all the stuff that once was valuable to it's owner now was either broken, unwanted, out of style or otherwise undesirable.

Here is another picture of an interesting carload we saw beside us. I think this guy probably garbage for people, I should have gotten his number. :)

The other funny thing we saw as a Hummer H2 filled with junk unloading it. Illustrates another point, everyone has trash.

As we were backed up to the dumping zone, I looked inside the big building that hold all of this smelly trash, it really almost made me gag. I looked up and in the windows of the transfer station the workers had written inspirational messages in the soot that had built up on the windows. We enjoyed seeing their encouragement to all that came to dump legally.

I leave you with these few point that I learned from dumping.

1. We all have trash.
2. Purging is work and it costs.
3. We can turn a dirty situation into something inspirational.
4. Oklahoma has trees.