cardboard shuffle
I promised myself I would never collect cardboard and sell it back at the recycler. It just seemed so low. But curiosity got to me, and today I had a bunch in the back of the truck so I called around to find out where and how to turn it in. It probably helps that I have a limp (bad ankle from the fight last weekend) and long hair and an army jacket on today. It really got me into the deranged-vet-hardscrabbling-the-city-for-some-beer (heroin?)-money mentality.
I found a place at Pier 96, down in the industrial end of town naturally, that was buying back with a minimum of 150 pounds. I wasn’t sure how much I had so I headed to a warehouse I’d made a few deliveries to in my time. Like a pot of gold a big ol’ stack of boxes was waiting, and they were already broken down! I had just thrown a stack in the bed and was back in the dumpster on the loading dock when this large angry man started throwing my boxes out of my truck and screaming,”You’re stealing my cardboard! Unload this shit now!”
I started fast talking an apology and he said, “You know how much the garbage company charges me if I don’t leave them the recycling?”
“No sir, no, I wouldn’t have any idea.”
“20,000 a month!” Spittle came out of his mouth with the dollar amount. His face was red. Is this why more people aren’t recycling cardboard?
“I sure am sorry, I didn’t realize it was stealing.”
He got into a pick up and drove away, and guys on another loading dock gave me the meanest look. Like I was junkie caught stealing a laptop. I’d have to hope I had my 150 pounds already. On to Pier 96. It’s a long drive down a really rough road and there are cranes for loading ships looming in the distance. The city police have a driving course marked out with fluorescent yellow and red cones on a huge swath of pavement behind chain link fence. It’s where they come to learn how to drive 120 mph down Lombard.
The other side of the street is a windowless processing center. Just before I hit the bay there is a weigh master – she is nearly five feet tall and Asian. She gives me a plastic card that reads “13″ and tells me if I have less than 150 pounds “no money.”
Machines are baling up plastic like it is hay and fork lifts are loading it into trucks. Same goes for paper and aluminum. Gotta feed the machines. The Tide detergent bottles stand out in the compressed mash. I remember that.
I pull the truck into a huge open warehouse, just drove in through a twenty foot high roll up door. A man in a day-glo safety vest gave me a piece of paper and told me to throw the cardboard on the floor “over by that yellow pole.”
It was easy enough. I drove back out and got on the outbound scale. I’d lost 180 pounds. The weigh master gave me 11 dollars and 73 cents. Not bad. Cardboard’s selling for 130 bucks a ton these days. If everything else goes wrong I can do this.