Taking out the Trash

Mama's, don't let your babies get thrown out in duffel bags

Jacob Deates, a 4-year-old boy from Kenosha, Wisconsin, has a fascination with garbage trucks.

One day, he thought, I'm gonna figure out where all that trash goes.

He planned and he planned and he thought and he thought. Then it came to him. The plan of plans. The thought of thoughts. He couldn't wait to try it out.

Monday morning, Jason hid inside a duffel bag that was placed out with the family trash. The garbage truck arrived, the trash men picked up the trash.

Everything, including the bagged boy,was tossed in. Then things got quiet. Then things got really loud! The compactor on the truck was turned on.

Trash collector Inis Ramadani heard the boy scream and looked to see his hand reaching out of the bag.

"I grabbed the boy and gently put him out and he ran to his house," said Ramadani, the father of a 3-year-old girl and two older boys. "It was a very frightening moment for me."

Curiosity spurs me to ask how the Jason managed all this without mom and/or dad noticing. If it gets quite when you've got a four-year-old in the house, you know something's up.

Perhaps Jason can be steered toward an obsession with watching grass grow or notating bird migrations. Or stamp collecting.

Jason is not alone in his obsession.

Garbage Detail

Elizabeth Royte talks trash in her book, 'Garbage Land'*. Royte spent a year ladling landfills, wading in sewage water in order to trace everything from recycling to septic waste. She had no shortage of source material.

You Can't Refuse

Not only are Garbage Pail Kids still around, but you can build your own.

Noise Pollution?

Garbage. They went away. They came back. Put your can on the curb and listen.

All New Gassy Fuel?

"It's a shame to waste all the BTU's** that are there if you have an end user that's reasonably close," says Jim Voss. Those BTU's are produced by methane, the gas that passes when your trash is past. Most landfills either burn it or pipe it away. Voss plans to sell it. And people are buying.

*was that not a cheesy and horrific intro?

** British Thermal Units - a standard unit of energy.