Bulk Trash

Our neighbor decided to cut down a small forest. Why? We do not know.

On our evening jaunt around the neighborhood, Roland and I happened upon a rare treat: looking through our neighbor's garbage. Okay, not their actual garbage full of banana peels and coffee grounds -- just the bulk trash they decided to put out on the curb for pick-up. Bulk trash pick-up is the last week of every month here, and there are very specific guidelines for what does and what does NOT qualify for pick-up:

OK: large limbs, shrubbery, bagged leaves (in sealed bags with a maximum 50 gallon capacity), furniture, appliances, mattresses and box springs

NOT OK: bagged grass clippings, new construction or remodeling materials such as lumber or roofing materials, bricks, concrete, rocks, dirt, paint, oil and hazardous containers

Do not ask me why a bag of leaves is acceptable but leaving a a bag of grass clippings outside for pick-up can carry a hefty fine of up to $200. Are they really opening the bags to check and make sure there's no grass in there?

Also, many people seem to see bulk-trash pick-up as an excuse to throw away regular sized items that could easily fit in their 90-gallon standard issue trash cans/recycle bins (weekly trash collection occurs in the alleys every Tuesday). Is this allowed? The rules don't explicitly prohibit it, but I'm sure it's annoying for the bulk trash staff, who are already probably having to deal with bags of prohibited grass clippings.

Then there are people like our neighbor, who apparently cut down half the limbs on his oak trees just to celebrate bulk trash pick-up day (picture above). 

Luckily, all this trash reminded us that we had our first OK contribution to bulk pick-up, the box spring from our old bed set-up that we unsuccessfully tried to donate for several months. Tip: The Dallas Salvation Army will NOT take queen & king sized box springs without an accompanying mattress. After convincing Roland that he did not need to do any "unwelding" to the springs to break it down, we carried it out to curb where it will hopefully be the topic of someone else's blog post.