HAUL TALK 4152

Scent of a Trash Bin

Raccoons, rats, roaches and other ancestral enemies of garbage men and the customers they serve should gird themselves for an insidious new weapon in the battle of the bin: pleasant-smelling trash.

Inventor Joe “Dee” Dussich, CEO of JAD Corp., a Queens, N.Y.-based garbage bag manufacturer, has begun infusing his products with the scents of mint, wintergreen and eucalyptus, which he says marauding critters find repellant. According to Dussich, the highly sensitive olfactory glands of these scavengers are perfect for sniffing out trash, but are irritated by the strong mint smells favored by humans. Indeed, some of the natural scents he uses are actually marketed as over-the-counter sinus openers.

The fresh-smelling bags were originally developed for and tested on rats, but were later discovered to be effective against raccoons and roaches as well. One suspects the eucalyptus-scented bags will not be embraced in Australia, lest ravenous koalas begin raiding dumpsters.
Source: The Toronto Star

Single Stream Mail

Ah, the postal service. Much maligned in the age of e-mail and instant messaging, “snail mail” has struggled to compete. But how to improve efficiency? Why, skip the tedious sorting and deliver everything directly to the recycling bin, of course!

Perhaps that's what British postal carrier Brian Davis had in mind when he recycled more than 1,500 packages he was supposed to deliver. Davis' special deliveries began after suffering a nosebleed at the sorting office and his Royal Mail managers forbade him to go home to change his shirt. Later, while making deliveries, his nose began to bleed again, staining some of the packages. Davis, according to his lawyer, decided then (and on two later occasions) to dump the mail at the recycling center out of anger at his managers' lack of sympathy for his nosebleed and a football-related knee injury that made it difficult to complete his route. Davis is still awaiting sentencing.

Given the prodigious volume of junk mail filling mailboxes around the world, one could argue Davis' only crime was eliminating the middleman.
Source: CheshireOnline.co.uk