This weekend, Manda and I visited our city dump for the first time. I know a lot of people have done this before, but this was very novel and kind of amazing for us.
First up: THE SEAGULLS. Manda kinda freaked out over these seagulls because there were so freaking many of them. I am internationally infamous for getting shat on (Italy, Russia, and here in the U.S.), so my nerves were more about not wanting to exit the car under a cloud of well-fed flying animals.
Next up: I didn’t expect to see any art at the dump. There is an artist-in-residence program at the dump here, and I think some of the works were on display. Either that, or, the guys who work at the dump just like pulling out the weird stuff and lining them up on the hill. I didn’t get a good photo of this, cuz there was a guy in a truck giving us the side-eye for ogling and we proceeded to drive forward.
Here’s a small shot of the inside area where we dumped our car-full of stuff. We actually had a lot of over-sized cardboard pieces and some large, broken wooden things, and not so much plastic weirdness, but apparently you just chuck it all (except hazardous waste) into this huge pile and then they sort through it later. Manda was a champ and had filled up my car all by herself. What the heck was I doing!? I can’t even remember. We kinda felt weird about taking a selfie at the dump, so, that’s why there is none of that.
San Francisco has a zero-waste goal for 2020. I haven’t read many details about it, but visiting the dump was kind of a good kick in the pants for becoming more aware of what we toss or recycle. We’re definitely trying to make better use of our green/compost bin and are looking into buying a charcoal-filtered compost pail for the kitchen, especially since we’re trying to cook more at home. I don’t have strong hippie-dippie tendencies, but I’m also not into turning the planet into a huge trash heap, which is also why I try to keep the packaging for my Etsy shop pretty basic without many bells and whistles. I still buy new boxes and tissue paper for shipping, though, but I guess we are all sort of working through how to approach this stuff. Baby steps!
