1. It鈥檚 One of the Most Dangerous Jobs in the World
There are around 90聽work-related deaths聽out of 100,000 employees in the US per year. Sanitation worker is ranked third among the riskiest jobs in the United States, with only fishing and timber cutting ranked higher. Garbage collectors have twice the聽fatality rates聽of police officers and nearly seven times that of firefighters.
Dangerous machinery, falls, exposure to needles, and other sharp objects are just a few of the many聽reasons聽for injury and death.
2. Some Garbage Workers Lift 100 Pounds or More Hundreds of Times During a Shift
Unless you work in a city where they have fancy hydraulic lifts for the trucks, sanitation workers聽lift and toss聽15 to 20,000 pounds of rancid garbage on average into the truck during a single shift.
3. Garbage Men and Women Find a Lot of Drugs
The trash heap is THE place to toss your stash when on the run from the cops, so garbage men are not phased by finding all manner of drugs – and sometimes those drugs are explosive.
One garbage man recounted an interesting story about just such an explosion聽on Reddit: “My guys called me frantic one day after an explosion in the hopper of the truck. Thankfully no one was injured, but I called the fire department and police always come on fire calls too. Turns out they had been watching the house we were in front of because the guy was cooking meth. He threw away some of the ingredients and the pressure when it compacted caused it to explode. The best part was the fact that the guy sat out front watching the show in a bathrobe. He eventually got dressed and came back out. When he was arrested he had drugs in his pants. Apparently he didn’t own any pants without drugs in the pockets.”
4.聽Some Towns Train Their Garbage Men to Spot Crime
In聽Men at Work, garbage men Charlie Sheen and his real life bro Emilio Estevez (who also wrote and directed the film) uncover an illegal toxic waste dump after finding a body in a can on their route. A county in Florida thinks their garbage workers would also make聽good sleuths. They鈥檙e out on those mean streets every day, after all. Waste Management and Manatee County, in Florida, even train their trash collectors to聽spot聽and report suspicious activity.
“They’re out early in the morning when most folks like myself are sleeping then they’re out during the daytime in your communities or they’ve left home and gone to work,” said Joe Vidovich, head of corporate security for Waste Management. “So, they’re in a position to see what’s going on in your neighborhoods when you’re not there.”
Other towns across the US also turn to their garbage collectors – as well as postal workers – to look for any kind of suspicious behavior.
5.聽Pay Averages $9.11 to $24.50 per Hour
罢丑别听聽for a garbage man is $15.55. Drivers typically make more than the average refuse worker and need a commercial driver鈥檚 license.
6.聽Before There Were Garbage Men, There Were Toshers, Mudlarks, and Dustmen
People took care of their own waste by burying it or burning it, until the population boom around the turn of the century. With the arrival of the聽Industrial Age, many waste products could be recycled to make others. Dog feces were used to purify leather and ash was added to mortar. This scraping lead to many clashes between scavengers and authorities.
The Public Health Act of 1875 created a formal waste collection authority and required that household bins be full with each pick up. Empty cans resulted in a fine.
In fact, it was Benjamin Franklin who created the first street cleaning service in 1757.
7.聽Garbage Men Sometimes Keep the Good Stuff You Throw Out
Just because your old flat screen TV has that ugly scratch on and you’ve replaced it doesn鈥檛 mean it should be dumped. Garbage collectors have zero qualms about聽salvaging聽working electronics, collectibles, and other items.
8.聽Fall Is Not a Popular Season with Refuse Workers
Leaves fall, yards get raked, bins fill up. Those leaves result in聽thousands of pounds聽of lifting for garbage men and women. They’re not so fond of winter either when snow piles up on garbage and bins.
9.聽Garbage Men Are Used to Being Hit or Splashed with Feces and Urine
One Philadelphia sanitation worker described picking up whole crates of聽bottled urine. “Remember that spot on 45th street? The guys had whole crates, maybe 10 of them, and each crate holds nine bottles of urine in Frank’s soda bottles,鈥� Terry Lawson recounted in 2012 to the聽Metropolis. “They put it in a box and it splash [sic] up on us.鈥�
10.聽Around 99% of US Refuse Workers Are Men
Although there are at least 1,000聽women聽working as garbage collectors and drivers in the United States.
11.聽People Throw Away a Lot of Porn
It turns out, non-online porn is still a go-to for many people. So, when a new partner moves in or a mother- or father-in-law comes to visit, there may be an emergency chucking. Tons of porn聽turning up in the bin聽may also be the result of an angry fit by a snooping boyfriend or girlfriend. In any case, garbage men and women see a lot of porn stashes getting tossed out.
12.聽Early Garbage Men Didn鈥檛 Get Plague Pay
What did people do with their garbage before the modern day truck with hydraulic lift and landfills? They buried it, composted, and recycled. The first garbage men were聽鈥渞akers.鈥澛燭hey raked up the trash weekly and were susceptible to many diseases.
Most notably,聽rakers聽were tasked with collecting the infected and dead during the Black Death across 14th century Europe. Considering that 50 million people died of the plague, the raker鈥檚 job was particularly dangerous and grisly.
13. There’s So Much Garbage on Everest, the Indian Army Had to Become Garbage Men
Since the 1970s,聽thousands of pounds of garbage聽has collected over the 8,850 meter trek up the mountain. A 34 member team from the Indian army removed waste (mainly from Camp 1) in April of 2015. 鈥漇adly, Mount Everest is now … called the world’s highest junkyard,” Maj. Ranveer Singh Jamval, the team leader said.
This isn鈥檛 the first garbage removal from Everest. Since 2008, Eco Everest Expedition makes an annual trek to bring down garbage from the mountain. Authorities in Nepal now require climber to carry out an extra 18 pounds of garbage in addition to their own human waste and trash.
14.聽Lots of NYC Trash Has to Be Removed by Hand
Between midnight and 5 am, garbage collectors have to remove all of the garbage in New York’s Chinatown. Most of it has to be hand carried.聽Mike Rowe found out聽just how hard it is to carry hundreds of pounds of garbage up and down stairs for five hours.
15.聽The Average Diesel-Powered Garbage Truck Costs Between $235,000 and $250,000
Garbage trucks have聽come a long way. Since the 1920s, they have evolved with the law, reducing garbage collectors’ exposure to waste. Most modern day trucks are聽fully automated, requiring only drivers. Some garbage trucks even have motion-activated cameras.
16.聽Being a Garbage Man or Garbage Woman Is Not a Fall Back Career
Generally, garbage collectors take聽great pride聽in their work and they don鈥檛 take kindly to people thinking of it as a throw a way job.
17.聽Waste Used to Be Dumped in the Ocean, Waterways, or Any Vacant Lot
By 1908, the U.S. mainly聽dumped聽its waste in the ocean, wetlands, smaller waterways, and just about any unused land mass. 聽It wouldn’t be until 1934 when the Supreme Court banned dumping in the ocean.
18.聽Garbage Collectors Will Search Through Trash for the Cops
There鈥檚 a reason investigators聽turn to garbage men聽to go through the trash. They are not about to get their suits dirty and sanitation professionals know how to sort through garbage quickly and effectively.
19.聽Many Small Towns Had Piggeries for Food Waste
In the early 1900s, most small towns had聽鈥減iggeries,鈥澛爏mall pig farms聽where raw and cooked food waste was fed to the swine.
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