Curbside view of what's old, what's new
This is the week when garbagemen earn their keep.
By the time they get home from their shifts, their backs and arms will be sore from throwing all the torn Christmas wrapping paper, empty boxes, discarded televisions and computers into their trucks.
Along with these will be the garbage cans filled with the remnants of decorations, holiday parties and dinners. They pray for dry weather and windless evenings before collection days.
At each house they know who Santa was good to by the pile of paper and empty toy boxes by the curb. He seems to have been busy at many East Dundee houses, said Matt Fitzpatrick, an Allied Waste employee whose route is in the lower neighborhoods.
"There are a lot of empty television, computer and toy boxes in front of them," he said. "Those are the ones that were damaged with flooded basements."
In August after a drenching rainstorm, he and a handful of other garbage men drove through the same neighborhoods collecting soaked carpeting, sofas boxes full of papers, toy kitchen sets and dolls.
But that's all in the past. We're on the doorstep of a new year and Fitzpatrick is heaving the garbage of the old into his truck. And in the heap are the Christmas trees, fresh-cut and artificial, customers put by the curb.
"I've already picked up one or two trees the week before Christmas," Fitzpatrick said. "The people were probably going on vacation and didn't want to leave it in their house."
In the weeks to come, he and his co-workers will throw a forest full of dry balsam and Douglas fir trees into their trucks. A week ago they were centerpieces of holiday gatherings. Now, they are garbage to get rid of before their needles shed until their branches become bare.
"We don't handle as many trees as we used to," he said. "I think a lot of people are going with artificial trees. They can use them year after year."
Some customers on his route are choosing to take their fresh-cut trees to the Dundee Township highway garage at Sleepy Hollow Road and Route 72. There they will be chipped and used in the open space sites throughout the township. The service is free and open to all township residents.
The should be clean of ornaments and tinsel.
The program makes Fitzpatrick's job easier and load lighter. One fewer item to throw in his truck. The trees he does collect goes on the pile and eventually to the landfill with all the other Christmas items, he said.
"Some towns pay an additional fee to have a separate truck come by and collect the trees," he said. "They are kept separate."
The ones that aren't just fill up the landfills even quicker will all the other items.
"Some of the things by the curb still work. People throw out working televisions and computers because they got new ones," Fitzpatrick said. "They should have called organizations like the AmVets to come and take them away and put them to good use."