Muckraking journalism at the dump

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34103, 16 March 1976, Page 1

Muckraking journalism at the dump

(By

TERRY McGOVERNE

The pickings at the Bexley dump are not what they used to be. Gone are the days when fossickers could fijid half a hundredweight of scrap lead in a day.

The reason is that fossickers, alias scavengers, are no longer permitted into the dump, and even if they were the amount of sc. ap they would find would hardly justify the time spent looking for it. Nonetheless, a close-up study of garbage at the Aranui dump yesterday showed that people . are throwing away property that is still useful, and even valuable.

An hour of ripping open ■ some of the thousands of blue plastic bags gathered I on the council’s garbage trucks brought no pleasant . surprises, plenty of unplea- : sant smells, and some startling examples of gross , wastefulness. Inside three bags exam-

ined at random from the tip truck were what appeared to be the discards from women’s wardrobes — slacks, blouses, cardigans, sweaters — all in very good condition and clean. One would have thought that the people who threw them out had washed and ironed them for the occasion.

Most of the plastic bags contained common household rubbish — newspapers, potato peelings, pet food cans, empty vodka bottles, detergent containers, worn-out shoes, even grass clippings. The bulkier rubbish came in a steady stream on trailers and in the boots of family cars.

' One couple arrived just after lunch with the kitchen stove on board.

“You can have it if you want it,” the woman said. “There is nothing 7 ; wrong with it.”

“Well, why are you throwing it out then,” we asked.

“We don’t want it any more,” she said.

The small stove was indeed in very good condition, not even scratched. No point in anyone’s looking for it now, though. It will be under a mountain of rubbish one would need a bulldozer to move.

Another dumper arrived with its trailer load, which contained two coils of steel rope, also in first-class condition. They had come from a yacht, he said, but he did not want them any more.

“They would cost you a fair few bucks if you had to buy them,” he said.

The bulldozer driver said that people were much more selective in what they threw out these days. There used to be tons of lead, copper, and old car batteries, but now such things were rare. The dump staff of three did not bother to recover anything of worth, he said. They were not supposed to, anyway.

Notwithstanding the signs at the gate warning people that they could be prosecuted for scavenging, one

man slipped through the fence while we were there. He told us in broken English spoken with a marked European accent that he was looking for a tin for fishing. “For the bait or the fish?” we asked. “For the feesh,” he replied. His fears allayed that we might dob him in he told us he had been through the pockets of some coats and had found a good watch.

Together we overturned an agitator-model washing machine and found it to be in remarkable condition with the motor and pump still fitted. I wondered if the unauthorised visitor .would be back to pick it up. The dump staff said they had a lot of trouble with scavengers who came in when they went home and at week-ends.

The danger of scavenging was the risk of disease or being injured by broken glass and discarded instruments from hospital garbage.

Children were as much trouble as adults, said the staff. They seemed satisfied with a Magistrate’s decision yesterday to fine two people who had been caught scavenging. There are thousands of other scavengers actually living at the dump — a vast colony of sea birds which have obviously lost aIT interest in things maritime.

The oirds must be among the best fed of their kind in New Zealand. They have perfected the art of ripping open the plastic bags and feasting on the contents. The council staff say the birds do a first-class job because they take care of all the scraps which get caught in the wheels of vehicles and then get carried about the dump until they fall off.

The birds also play their own game of chicken with the bulldozers and compactor — a massive machine with blunted spikes on its wheels which pounds the rubbish Into a solid mass be-

fore truckloads of sand and soil get dumped on top of it. The birds flit about only inches in front of these machines screeching all the while as if to tell the driver to “beat it” until they have finished what they started. A frequent visitor to the dump is a man whose business is to dispose of derelict motor cars. He arrived with two car bodies on the back of a truck yesterday. Using a hydraulically-operated arm he gave the bodies one swot and they went for - six over the side. It cost him five dollars dumping fee for each vehicle, he said. Most of them came from wreckers’ yards at the rate of about five a day.

Among the great piles of industrial and commercial rubbish on view yesterday were hundreds of jars of an apparently outdated medicine for relieving constipation. The council staff wanted to make sure these were covered over before the birds got into them.