Trashy behavior

Last spring, JRM Hauling, a local company that does trash pickup for a lot of communities in Massachusetts (especially on the North Shore, where they're based) was acquired by Republic Services, a multi-billion dollar outfit HQ'd in Arizona.  

Kudos to the Motzkin family on this sale.

JRM, founded nearly 30 years ago by James R. Motzkin, had been co-run by Motzkin  père with his son James S. Motzkin since Motzkin fils finished school. The company was one of those solid, unglamorous businesses that the Motzkins built from the ground up. (Despite everything I learned watching The Sopranos, I don't believe for a New Jersey minute that every trash hauling business is mobbed up.)

I'm sure it was plenty hard work to build their small but still sizable business - JRM had 350 employees and 300 trucks - and it's entirely understandable that, when a powerhouse outfit like Republic Services rolled in and made them an offer they couldn't refuse, they carted the loot off and sighed a big sigh of 'hey, we're rich' relief.

Good for them.

Not so good for the communities that they once served.

Although the FAQ explaining the move said this:

This transition should be seamless for you. We will provide the same level of service you are accustomed to receiving.

In October, JRM's operations were taken over by Republic and seamless it ain't exactly been 

Throughout the cities, towns, office parks, and housing complexes that Republic is now responsible for, trash is piling up. A pain for residents, a field day for vermin, both urban (rats) and suburban (racoons). Yummers.

Delivery days are being missed, customer complaints are being ignored, and the only good news seems to be that, given that it's October, we're not having a heat wave.

Lawrence, an old industrial city north of Boston, is one of the communities impacted.  

The stinky situation in Lawrence is playing out in other communities around Greater Boston, after the Arizona-based Fortune 500 company recently acquired their local waste contractor and threw trash collection schedules into chaos.

Now, after weeks of missed pickups outside houses and public buildings alike, inaccurate or unhelpful information from Republic, and fury among residents, town officials are threatening to cancel their contracts and levy six-figure fines on Republic. (Source: Boston Globe)

Other than paying lip service to the concept of doing better, Republic has been pretty non-responsive. Which makes it hard for the cities and towns to give their constituents a straight answer about what up. (In the first couple of weeks of the seamless transition, the town of Reading - population 25,000 - has gotten "more than 1,000 complaints." If it weren't so depressing, that number would be pretty impressive.)

Some cities and towns are taking care of business on their own, renting trucks and and enlisting their DPW employees to haul trash. 

In Reading, Town Manager Fidel Maltez joined DPW crews himself on Monday, clad in a neon safety vest, hoisting garbage bags and talking to residents.

Ah, DPW's. I remember back when.

Growing up, our garbage men worked for the City of Worcester. But they just picked up garbage (things like coffee grounds, eggshells, and orange peels, wrapped in old newspapers and tied with string). If you had maggots - which, of course we did at least once in the summer - the DPW guys would turn the garbage pail over. One of my least favorite chores as a kid was bleaching the garbage can and then hosing it down. 

We also burnt trash in a regularly replaced (because it had rusted away) metal barrel. And we paid the "can man" to come once a month and haul away bushel baskets (from our family's bushel-at-a-time apple purchases) full of cans and bottles. Our can man also ran an antique store of sorts. One man's trash is another man's treasure, I suppose, but I can't imagine that Archie L. found much that was antique-store worthy in the trash he collected in our neighborhood.

Old newspapers (the ones that weren't used for garbage disposal) and magazines were saved for when the Boy Scouts held a paper drive. My mother also saved every worn out towel, every no longer wearable shirt or nighty, to be used for cleaning rags. (Buttons were removed from any item that had buttons, and stored in the button box for later use.)

Sometimes, we went with my father to the Ballard Street Dump to throw things into the giant incinerator there. One of the scariest memories of my childhood was peering over the edge of the dump and looking down into the acrid, smoldering mound of trash there. (I remember thinking that this was probably what hell was like.) What trash we had that needed disposal in the incinerator, I can't recall. Maybe this was before we started using Archie L?

One thing I do know is that, back in the day, there was not as much trash being disposed of.

Sure, people littered (not my family: the only littering allowed was dropping an apple core out of the car window 'for the birds', and then only if we were riding around in the sticks, not the city) - something you don't see as much of anymore. But there was no fast food. Packaging was simpler. People didn't consume as much crap. And people didn't idly dispose of things when they got sick of them. Use it up, wear it out, give it away. 

But these days, there's a lot more trash, which enabled the Motzkins to build a fortune for themselves.

As I said, good for them. And they were apparently pretty good at it, with very few complaints lodged over the years.

Republic appears to be another story entirely. And I'm wondering what's going on there. Are people quitting because they're being maltreated by the new guys in town, who don't know them from Adam and couldn't care less? And, of course, the new guys in town may be new guys, but they aren't actually in town. They're in Arizona.

Tip O'Neil famously held that 'all politics is local.' So's all trash pick up.

Here's hoping Republic cleans up its act.