By John E. Weare
Keep Alliance Beautiful
My generation has been pegged as people who grew up between analog and tech – we can handle (and are often comfortable with) either. A newspaper in the hand brings more satisfaction while perusing headlines, yet I now read my preferred daily edition’s online with my smartphone. Other technology I spent hours on during my youth now reminds me of the manual real-life version.
Video games in the mid-1980s would simply defeat the player by picking up the pace in many cases. As my middle brother and I plugged in our latest Atari cartridge we knew the console would find the limit of our reflexes in weeks, sometimes days. Several years later our youngest brother began playing more advanced scenarios on Nintendo. Gaming no longer held much interest for me by then until the advent of the Gameboy and Tetris. Finally a simple, satisfying game. Watch the lines vanish as you fit the proper combination of shapes! Cobble together 100 lines or more and the time was worthwhile.
Any given day at the Keep Alliance Beautiful Recycling Center kindles memories of Tetris. Look inside the building and two or three high stacks of Gaylord boxes and bales are reminiscent of Q*bert and Jenga, respectively. In the cardboard baler each load is like a line of Tetris: find the right pieces, fill the space, close the door and press the button to make it “disappear”. However, there are situations when our crew wishes the game pieces would stay put.
The Alliance business that, arguably, produces the greatest volume of cardboard on our route has five totes at their location we empty twice, sometimes three times a week. “Tote” refers to 275- or 330-gallon Intermediate Bulk Containers. Originally, a metal cage surrounded a cube-shaped HDPE (the same plastic as milk jugs) tank with a screw top and drainage spot on the bottom. KAB uses the totes with the top of the tank cut out or only the cage. On two occasions this past month when I checked with Doug and Willis on their route they found four totes there instead of five. Now, the containers have been given steel arms so they can hold hands when someone wants to play Red Rover. No more leaving the playground with just anybody if I can help it.
Okay, so where both thefts occurred is a bit out of the way from passersby and any cameras (that anyone was watching at the time). This week I retrieved one of our trailers that had been repaired and switched out a full tote of cardboard and paperboard by their Dumpster. As I drove down Box Butte Avenue the next day the phone rang. “I went outside with an armload of cardboard and the container wasn’t there,” the owner of the fabrication shop said. I assured him that I had left a tall tote after checking with his son about the trailer, though promised to bring another older, cruddier version soon. A 330-gallon tote in good shape with a bladder at this more visible location had been handy and, I guess, irresistible.
Of course, whoever is making use of our three totes, all with large “A’s” spray painted on the sides may justify their actions by saying we have plenty and will not miss them. Not true. Though our hauler works to retrieve totes that we sent full previously, availability is not always guaranteed. Our former recycling supervisor, G.O. Thompson always kept his ear to the ground for entities that would donate used totes. From highway projects to grain elevators he made
sure we had plenty to supplement our rotating supply. Our not-for-profit organization lacks the resources to buy from the online market.
To the new “owners” of our cubes: they like level ground and a steady diet of recyclables – cardboard if possible. Please tip over to empty heavy snow or they’ll start to shiver. We ask no questions when wayward containers find the way back home.