Taking Out the Trash: Busting Misconceptions about the Lives of Garbage Men

It’s 6 a.m.

Most of Lawrence, Kansas, is still asleep, but Mike Brown just distributed safety vests to the sanitation engineers about to collect the week’s garbage from every household in town. They’re colored a brighter yellow than the sun that hasn’t even risen yet. As one of the city’s Solid Waste Field Supervisors, Brown also provides any equipment the weather might call for: jackets, sunglasses or water. This is a job that gets done whether it’s rain or shine.

“The only day I remember we called off trash collection was about five years ago. You could barely see in front of you. There were these big flakes coming down, it was snowing so hard,” said Brown.

That’s just one day of more than 6,500 Brown has spent working in the Lawrence Solid Waste Management (SWM) division, but he hasn’t always been a supervisor. Like most of his colleagues, he’s worked his way up through the ranks. The typical hierarchy starts with loaders (waste collectors), who can then graduate to drivers after a required CDL certification within six months of starting the job, and the top level is a field supervisor.

I wanted to learn more about the real lives of garbage men, so I started at the bottom. After receiving a safety vest, pair of gloves and safety protocol briefing from Mike Brown, I hopped on a trash truck to work alongside loaders on the morning pick-up. This ride-along helped me dispel the wrong ideas I had about the professions, teaching me which facts are true and which ones are garbage.

As the truck moved from stop to stop, I held onto one side while Sefo Vaeono held onto the other. He was the loader that taught me how to do the job. It’s something he’s gotten good at over eight years of practice. In his Samoan accent, he told me the correct term is “sanitation engineer,” but whether you call them garbage men, waste collectors, or loaders, he said he doesn’t care — their job stays the same.

We wheeled the carts at the end of each driveway back to the rear-load truck, pulled a lever on the truck so a metal hook would attach to the carts, then watched that household’s garbage from the week get tipped into the large opening. The heavy, pungent smell emanating from the truck had mostly come from the juices of rotten produce and other foods pooling at the bottom of the truck, but as it blended into the load of other items. Whether it was food wrappers, a pristine flower painting, or a ripped-up child’s teddy bear, it was all destroyed and compacted by the truck’s hopper. Even the smell was quickly carried away by the 11 a.m. breeze. It was a chilly morning but I wasn’t cold. The warmth I felt didn’t just come from the physical labor and my extra jacket; it was felt in the wholesome sense of community as we waved to kids and parents playing in the front yards of every house on our route.

“I feel strong ties to the community,” Vaeono said. “I see these people every day because I’m on the same route with the same guys. We get to know them pretty well, and they get to know us.”

All that waving and heavy lifting was quite the workout. We joked that it was like doing cardio and lifting weights, something Vaeono would continue after his shift. He likes to pick his son up from school so they can head to the gym together. Vaeono started working as a loader in addition to his job in construction, which helped him support his family after the 2008 recession. He has the option to move up in the ranks, like Brown and some other employees in the division choose to do, but Vaeono likes being a loader. His benefits cover vacation days and sick leave, something he had to use when he got injured on the job a few years ago. A cart fell on his leg, leaving him with a limp and large bruise for a few weeks.

Workers’ compensation is big in the industry, but SWM is always implementing strategies to protect the safety of employees like Vaeono. The division seeks to advance its technology through automation, which makes waste collection safer. In 2013, Lawrence provided carts to all households to ensure compatibility with the city trash trucks. Another past injury included a worker’s face being burned from a household cleaner splash, but inspired a new hazardous materials ordinance and the opening of a Hazardous Waste facility.

Kathy Richardson, manager of the Lawrence SWM division, brings in other community players to promote safety beyond automation and awareness. The Lawrence Fire Department provides CPR training, and Kim King, a physical therapist at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, gives lessons on proper lifting. Richardson is also president of the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA). This organization helps communities work together and improve their solid waste management systems by sharing solutions and resources. SWANA helps cover the cost of safety training certifications for sanitation workers, in an effort to get garbage men out of the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the US. Trash collection ranked as the fifth in TIME’s 2016 list, with 31 total deaths. Logging work ranked as the first most dangerous with 91 total deaths that year.

“Many people still think of waste collection as a ‘dirty job’ that no one wants to do. It’s more about finding smarter, more effective ways to manage waste,” said Richardson.

It was three hours after I’d first arrived at the SWM office, and all my questions had been answered. It was time to go home. After my ride-along, Brown gave me a ride back to the administration office. He said “10-18” into his walkie-talkie, reaching a muffled voice on the other end. But what did that code mean?

“It means you’re done with your route for the day,” he said.