As a blue collar laborer at a Twin Cities garden center, I partake in a slew of shitastic jobs. And nothing trumps my weekly visits to various city and suburban dumps. Hybrid cars and cutesy efficient light bulbs are great and all. But the job of properly disposing of massive amounts of materials to be reused and recycled for future use is the most crucial. It is also just happens to be the most filthy. Here are a few scenes from the underbelly of the green movement with an unlikely eco-warrior.

Paper Factory: Cardboard Recycle

I’m driving a box-truck delivery van that is loaded floor to ceiling with a thousand pounds of loose cardboard. I’m drinking a BFC (Big Fucking Can) of Monster Energy drink. I pull into a ginormous factory. Huge Caterpillar construction vehicles rip through a mountain of loose paper that is honest to god fifty feet tall. Pigeons spin in the air at the peak of the pile. All the workers are burly white men that look like rapists you’d see in police sketches. As I back up into the unload area – a hole in a cement wall –I wisely turn off 89.3 The Current which was playing the ethereal sounds of the Decembrists. I heave loads of cardboard through the hole in the wall. A short, fat, black man wearing a hard hat, eye protection, ear protection, steel toes, and blaze orange vest bee lines towards me. We are drowning in an ocean of industrial white noise. He leans in and lifts up the right ear cup on his ear protection headphones.

“HOW MUCH FUCKING SHIT YOU GOTS IN THAT FUCKING TRUCK?” The man screams. 

“THIS FUCKING TRUCK IS LOADED TO THE FUCKING NUTSACK,” I shout back. The man laughs. He likes my style. Twenty feet away, a Caterpillar loader tears through the paper mountain and makes a piercing shriek.

“FUCK THIS WALL. FUCK THAT HOLE. PULL THIS FUCKING TRUCK AROUND THE WALL, AND UNLOAD EVERY LAST FUCKING SCRAP OVER THERE,” the man shouts, as he points me towards the pile. He smiles, pulls his headphone back down, and waddles away.

Compost Dump: Tree Recycling

I’m driving a big-rig dump truck that is loaded with six yards of brush, tree branches, and some massive stumps that will be ground up and turned into landscape mulch. I drive down a brutal gravel road and into a lot that is a dingy industrial wasteland. With its eerily vacant factories and stacks of abandoned silos, it is a place you never want to visit.  A Northern Burlington cargo train rumbles by, whipping up the stale asbestos riddled air. I feel like I’m in a scene from The Wire.

I approach the dump office which is a trailer park trailer on stilts. There is a window on the side of the trailer which is at the exact height of my truck’s driver side window. It is like pulling through the McDonalds drive through. The window opens and a man awkwardly hangs half of his body out the side of the trailer.

“Hey! Guy! Todd is it?” The man says, as I roll down my window. “Recognized the truck!” (Note: You know you are working class when you get recognized at the dump.)

“Where you want me to dump it today?” I ask.

“No need to get scientific, Todd. See that pile right there?” He points to a pile of brush. “That’s where you dump your shit.” 

I back up to the pile, step out of the truck to unhitch the tailgate, and land ankle deep in mud and manure. Someone literally dumped shit (broken bags of fertilizer) there and now I’m standing in it. (File this moment under the category: Living the Dream.) 

Plastic Recycling

I walk into a mammoth warehouse. With its airplane hangar size and row after row of boxes and bins it resembles the warehouse in the last scene of Indiana Jones. Pictures of hot Latin women are stuck to the walls.   Crews of Asian dudes wearing masks drive forklifts at breakneck speeds. I flag one down. By my appearance (read:White), the Asian Dude already knows why I’m here.

“Dump. Outside,” the man says in broken English. He moves his arms in a large animated arch. “Big…” 

I walk outside and now see what Asian Dude meant by “Big…” There is yet another pile for me to dump in. I back up and begin to unload. Asian Dude climbs into the covered bed of the truck with me and stands an intimate three feet away. We chuck plastic pots into a recycling pile. Then a large frog jumps out of a pot, zips past Asain Dudes face, and sticks to the wall.

“He…your?” Asian Dude asks.