HAUL TALK 766

Post-Election Collection

After the ballots are cast and the winners declared, what happens to those dense forests of campaign signs that blight the November landscape? If Altogether Recycling in Denver has its way, candidates — victorious or otherwise — will deposit their unwanted signs in recycling bins. Besides benefiting the environment, the program is a pretty good indicator of which candidates adhere to the environmental plank of their platform.

According to the company, more than 85,000 campaign yard signs were erected in Denver for this political season. Most are made of highly recyclable Coraplast, a hollow-core plastic material that resembles cardboard. Many of the signs can be reused in future campaigns, but for those exiting the political stage, Altogether has set up collection sites around the city.

Political careers, alas, are not so easily salvaged.
Source: Altogether Recycling

Family Plot

When george campbell myers, 84, passed away on the eve of his 54th wedding anniversary, his Philadelphia-based family was understandably distraught. Perhaps that explains why Myers' 83-year-old widow, Susan, fainted at his funeral and had to be rushed to nearby Paoli Hospital. Her children later removed her jewelry for safe keeping, securing it in a knotted latex glove. Perhaps distress also explains why the family allowed the glove — containing a pearl bracelet given to Susan by her husband for her 80th birthday, her engagement ring, a 50th anniversary ring passed down from her mother and a guard ring — to wind up in the trash.

Once the Myers clan determined the jewelry — worth tens of thousands of dollars, to say nothing of its sentimental value — was most likely in the hospital's trash compactor, they hired Frank Dabney, the facility's environmental services manager, to assist them in a desperate bid to uncover it. Inserting an old mattress in the compactor to mark the location of that day's trash, the group waited until later in the week when Waste Management hauled the load to the Lanchester Landfill. There, decked out in plastic suits, gloves and wading boots, they began to sort through 15 tons of hospital waste.

Over the course of a sweltering day, they searched among the filth and stench, finally uncovering a pocket of “familiar trash,” and eventually — incredibly — the glove with all its contents intact. Susan, her precious mementoes restored, was never told of their unfortunate journey, though she no doubt wondered about the peculiar odor that accompanied her children for weeks.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer