Journal of a Plague Year, Sunday, April 5

Tomorrow is trash day, and the consequences of substitutions are becoming obvious.

I normally buy mineral water in 16.9 ounce plastic bottles. What’s available locally are 11.15 glass bottles.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to worry about broken glass.

Back when that was all that was available, I had a full-sized refrigerator and bottles would fit on the shelves. Now I have a counter-top model; the only place a bottle will fit is in the door. The compartment does not have a rigid bar to hold things in place.

It was no problem if a plastic bottle fell out, other than the explosion when it was opened. Now, I have to think to open the door slowly.

Glass is heavier than plastic, which means bottles will weigh down the trash. The young and the husky might not think this is a concern. That probably means they live in town and/or someone else takes out the garbage.

It’s more than 225 feet from my house to the road along a gravel drive. Those plastic containers don’t move well on gravel, especially in the winter.

I leave the trash container near the road, and drive my trash to it on Monday morning. Several of my neighbors, who also are past 70 years of age, do the same.

Down the road, individuals platted their land into small lots on private drives that are much longer than my drive.

The trash company doesn’t go down many of the dirt roads. Trash bins are gathered together at the main road, as many as a dozen in places.

I’ve seen people attach small wagons or trailers to their lawn tractors to move the containers from their houses to the roads.

Beyond weight, the difficulty with glass is that, if it breaks, it can tear through a plastic trash bag. That was especially a problem when the trash men had to pick up the bags and throw them into the trucks. If a bag broke, I was the one who had to pick up the debris that blew into the weeds.

Even now, if I have to throw out something with sharp edges, I put it inside a box or fabric. I’m using less paper, and don’t have enough protectors for the bottles.

The local trash company has changed to automated trucks, so the men won’t notice the bags are heavier. But I will, when I’m moving them from my car trunk to the container. And, I still can’t have a bag rip open.