Celebrating the Men and Women Who Drive Solid Waste!
Join the Binova Group team in celebrating the men and women that drive solid waste! These unsung heroes, including trash collectors, haulers, sewage workers, and street cleaners are literally doing the dirty work for all of us, to keep things moving along and our streets and businesses free of smelly waste. Without them, civilized societies would grind to a halt…quickly.
"Garbage men are a sign of a healthly city"
This weeklong celebration is the brainchild of John Arwood, a garbageman himself and CEO of Arwood Waste in Jacksonville, Florida. “Garbage men are a sign of a healthy city,†says Arwood. Collection and conservation went hand in hand with Arwood’s father, who started his son in recycling early, picking up aluminum cans in the neighborhood.
So, just where did this profession find its roots, and how far have we come from the medieval practice of tossing buckets of sewage from balconies, or throwing household waste into the street? Nearly three millennia before Christ walked this earth, the first landfill was developed in Knossos, Crete, whose residents dug large holes and then filled them with garbage, then layers of dirt. Nearly a thousand years later, the Chinese developed composting, as well as starting to recycle and re-use bronze. By 500 B.C., the first municipal regulations on garbage came into effect, when Athens Greece required garbage to be dumped at least one mile outside of the city.
Through most of history, though, there were not many folks doing the dirty work, and sanitation worldwide was poor, at best. Around 1350, the Black Plague broke out in Europe, killing over 25,000,000 people in just five years. Originating in Central Asia, it was spread mainly by humans, with rat fleas playing a part as well. Around the same time, a law was passed in Britain mandating a clean front yard, while in 1407 Parliament passed a law requiring waste to be stored outside until collected. Unfortunately, waste wasn’t viewed as a source of disease, and burning became the main way to care for it.
By the beginning of the 1700s, the Brits started turning their attention to waste problems, setting up nearly 250 “destructors†all over Britain – giant plants that burnt garbage to make electricity from steam. Closer to home, Benjamin Franklin started the first street cleaning services around 1757, while encouraging the public to dig pits to dispose of waste. As for recycling, General Washington’s men were the first Americans to take it seriously, melting down a statue of King George III and used it for ammunition against the tyrant!
In 1885, America built the first incinerator on Governor’s Island in New York. Shortly thereafter, New York City developed the first organized structure for garbage management. By 1915, incinerators and landfills started to pop up across America. Horse-drawn motor carts were replaced with motorized carts and trucks, making the first powered “garbage trucks†known to man. In 1937, a Tennessee tycoon named William Dempster invented a way to load metal bins into trucks using hydraulic power, revolutionizing the waste industry with the Dempster Dumpster. Large scale solid waste collection in America has advanced rapidly from this point, leading to the passage of the Solid Waste Disposal Act in 1965. The formation of the EPA in 1968 led to new laws for environmental protection and recycling.
Today, companies like Binova Group are working hard to innovate solid waste and make the jobs of the heroic men and women who do the dirty work even easier. In a nation that consumes 1,500 water bottles a second, garbage collection companies are always challenged to find new ways to dispose of our trash. We need our garbage men and women more than we know, so this week, show your appreciation, and provide your solid waste heroes with some fresh-baked cookies, a generous tip, or simply a word of appreciation and kindness!
Join Binova Group in Showing Our Appreciation for all of the Garbage Men & Women in our Communities!
Sources: garbagemanday.org, wikipedia.org, history.com, classicrefusetrucks.com