Burn Baby Burn!

The past few days it has been very chilly/cold/brisk and windy. The wind brings up three issues in my brain: first is the inaccuracy of the official “wind map” that says there isn’t enough wind produced in Missouri to power anything; second and, if it were warmer, I could dry clothes on the line in an hour; and third, when will I be able to burn my trash.

One thing I took for granted when living in the city/suburbs was trash removal. When you live in the city, your trash gets picked up by an anonymous group of folks (do you know anyone who picks up trash for a living? do you know their names?), for an anonymous “waste management” company (do you know which company your housing development contracts for trash pickup?), and off go your bags of junk to some unseen location (that would be the landfill that is in someone else’s “backyard”). I didn’t think about it because I didn’t have to take the time to negotiate costs for pick up or arrange for the days and times for the workers to pick up my trash. I only had to make sure I had the trash out at the curb (in “approved” containers that could NOT EVER be sitting on the sidewalk…) on the correct day and Viola! Several freshly emptied cans, usually not where you left them that morning (why did those trash guys toss my can into the next yard? Oh the horror…<please note the sarcasm…>), ready to haul back into the garage.

Here in the rural areas, you have to arrange and pay for private trash pick up. There isn’t a catch all tax levied against your property from which trash pick up servicing is paid. If you don’t have trash pick up, what do you do with your trash? Well, you can store it then load it up in your truck and take it to the landfill yourself (which isn’t free) or you burn it.

We recycle as much as possible: glass, tin, aluminum, cardboard, plastic, magazines, and batteries. We are lucky that we have a nearby recycling center which isn’t far away and they don’t charge for anything except the glass (because they are being charged more for having it hauled). What we burn is not as much if we didn’t recycle. Still, when it is windy, I cannot burn the trash. It has been dry here lately as well and even if it weren’t too dry, a windy day is not a good one for burning trash—the likelihood of starting a fire is too great (Smokey the Bear would be proud). We have burn barrels but I watch my burning trash carefully until the flames are below the top of the barrel. We also don’t have a fire department that comes charging up on brand-spanking new equipment to save the day—we pay yearly due for the volunteers that service our area.

We don’t mind, but it all brings to the fore that we have to be careful with what we do here. There isn’t a lot we can take for granted anymore and that isn’t a bad thing.