Down In The Dumps

On a Monday walk from Chez Boulevardier to downtown, Your Boulevardier encountered an illegal dumpsite on Norbridge Avenue, just west of Nunes Avenue. Returning to the scene yesterday, the detritus was still there. (Not that it would get up and remove itself.) Your Boulevardier apologizes for the poor quality of the photo.



Your Boulevardier and Mon Petit Chou, who was making a rare-but-welcome weekday visit, discussed the circumstances that could lead to a person dumping two couches, a bed, a pallet, and other miscellaneous refuse on a public street. Certainly, a trip to the dump can be costly, but the Castro Valley Sanitary District offers a free bulky pickup once a year. Perhaps timing and finances were the issue: the dumper had been evicted from his home and had nowhere to take the stuff, and no money to deal with the problem. Chances are the truth will never be known, in this particular case.

Regardless of the circumstances, dumping on a public street is a selfish, wasteful, uncivilized way to deal with refuse. Clearly the perpetrator knew this, because he dumped his junk in a dark, untrafficked stretch of road with no residences on either side.

Timing is Everything

Your Boulevardier notes with dismay that once again a large, windy, wet storm is arriving on trash day in his neighborhood in Castro Valley. Prepare for garbage cans (sorry, carts) to be blown over -- or for trash, especially papers, to be blown from trucks -- and for wet, sticky garbage to clog our streets and gutters. Sigh.

Uncanny

Can-pickers regularly work the trash receptacles on the Boulevard, retrieving recyclables. Which makes this scene, captured by Your Boulevardier this morning, very confusing.



Note that this is one of the receptacles with the recycling pyramid on top. Yet all of the cans and bottles are piled at its base. The only explanation Your Boulevard can come up with: when crews emptied the trash, they deposited the recyclables at the base of the receptacle so the pickers could more easily find them.

Any other theories?

Shred Day Coming Soon

No, the headline on this post does not refer to the new skate park. Instead, it is good news for people, like Your Boulevardier, who have a paper problem: that is, we keep too much of it, for too long and for no good reason.

On Saturday, July 11, the Castro Valley Sanitary District will participate in a document shredding event at Canyon Middle School. Residents are invited to bring up to ten (ten!) so-called "banker's boxes" of papers to the event, which will run from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., for secure destruction.

This gives us two weeks to clear out those old filing cabinets. Electronic waste, batteries, and old paint can be disposed of at the same event. More information can be found on the Castro Valley Sanitary District website.

More Trash Talk

On his evening constitutional Your Boulevardier noticed this overflowing refuse receptacle by the bus stop next to Safeway on Castro Valley Boulevard.

The Castro Valley Sanitary District will be contacted to inform them of the problem. None of the other trashcans on the Boulevard were similarly stuffed; one does not know if this one gets extra use, or if it was passed over in the last round (or two or seven) of collections.

And speaking of trash receptacles, the earlier post entitled "Yes We Can" about Castro Valley's new residential trashcans has attracted a better-than average number of comments. (Not that one would ever deign to call the esteemed and loyal Wudas "average.") Your Boulevardier is, of course, not an official of the Sanitary District so he cannot answer any of the fine questions posed by readers; however, some of them are addressed here.

And he will describe his own experience with the new cans (which, by the way, the District calls "carts," but Your Boulevardier does not).

The crew came through the Baywood District this last Tuesday delivering the new cans, and the delivery proved to be a strangely hypnotic operation. A flatbed trailer loaded with nested new cans was pulled along slowly by a truck. One worker stood on the moving trailer, putting wheels on each can and dropping it onto the street; another worker rolled one to each home. Another truck came through and collected the older garbage and recycling cans.

For reasons inexplicable, the pick-up vehicle left behind the old-style green-waste cans, even though the new ones for the same purpose had been delivered. As of today, three days later, the green can at Chez Boulevardier has still not been taken away, and Your Boulevardier is close to considering it a gift from the district for use around the yard. One can always use another sturdy trashcan with wheels.

Also of note: a surprising number of homes in the neighborhood have not yet rolled their new cans from the street and back to their yards. Perhaps they do not recognize them as theirs. Or perhaps the new cans are just too new and clean to put trash in. (Your Boulevardier admits that he can relate to this feeling.) Or maybe it's like a baby animal that has been touched by human hands: its mother rejects it because it does not smell right.

Yes We Can

Residents of the Castro Valley Sanitary District got notice recently that our trash-hauling rates would go up. In conjunction with this move, we will be getting new cans for garbage, recycling, and green waste.

Your Boulevardier has discovered the top secret staging area where the new cans are being readied for delivery. It is in the parking lot behind the Rite Aid store on Castro Valley Boulevard -- coincidentally, across the street from the District's offices.

The photo cannot do the scene justice. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cans, both green and grey. The green ones are stacked nine high, in ten rows, by about 40 rows. The mountain of grey cans is smaller but still formidable.



One is curious: what happens with the old cans? Are they recycled? And are the new cans made of recycled materials?

And, to answer Mr. Tom Hannon's question in the comments below: Your Boulevardier does not know where the third can is. But he suspects that the missing cans -- those for trash -- are not yet staged because their delivery is more complicated. There are at least two sizes of trash cans -- Your Boulevardier opts for the smaller, money-saving 20-gallon can, for example -- so these need to be distributed by address, rather than simply leaving one at each residence.

CV Sanitary District's 2009 Calendar

Your Boulevardier has long cast an admiring eye on the Castro Valley Sanitary District's annual calendar. Arriving in the mail this time of year, it's an efficient bit of communication: a calendar, the district's annual report, and a showcase for the winners of its annual recycled art contest, all in one.

Normally, the latter item -- the contest winners -- are a bit of a letdown. Making art from trash is a great idea, but the execution thereof can easily be disappointing. However, in the 2009 calendar, Your Boulevardier is thoroughly impressed with several of the pieces, including the garbage truck by Luke Luebker, the Shoes by Lucas Chang, and the Crochet Plastic Bag Purse by Merle Gee.

But most marvelous is Café Kimono -- what appears to be a full-sized garment made of used coffee filters by Tami Lundberg. The range of hues and patterns created by the filters is lovely and organic. Ms. Lundberg clearly took a great deal of time to clean and sort the filters by tone and piece together the kimono in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Well done!

Images of the current winners (beautifully photographed by Castro Valley High School students, it should be noted) are not yet posted online. A stack of the calendars is at the post office, should readers be interested in getting a copy.