Trash Talk: Centre Region Should Continue Current Bulk Waste Collection System

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

That popular saying has been around in one form or another for a hundred years or more. The idea behind it is that what is useless, of no value and only good for discarding to one person could be useful, valuable and worth keeping to another.

One of the reasons this saying is relevant to me right now is that our son is home from college and has performed his somewhat annual purge of clothes that, for one reason or another (size, style, wear), no longer fill a need in his life and are “trash” to him. Some of the clothes will be off to Plato’s Closet, and some will head to Goodwill or The Salvation Army. All in hopes of becoming “treasure” to someone else. 

Another reason this saying is relevant to me is that in a news article last month on this website there was information about the new trash company that will be taking over our garbage disposing duties. Starting April 1, 2025, Burgmeier’s Hauling will be picking up my trash weekly, as well as everyone else’s in Benner, College, Ferguson, Harris and Patton townships. 

Nine years ago on this website, I wrote a column about trash. One of the points I made in that column — and one that still surprises me to this day — is that here in Happy Valley we have one garbage pickup per week. Everywhere else I have owned a home in my life we had two trash pickups per week. 

Two pickups per week were always helpful from a volume standpoint as well as a smell standpoint. As for volume, don’t these decision-makers have kids? And as for the smell, well, I still keep a can of Lysol spray right next to the garbage can in our garage. But, as was the case with the contract when I wrote that article nine years ago, a second trash pickup per week is not in this new contract either. 

Then, just last week, our Ferguson Township newsletter arrived in the mail with all the fine details of this change spelled out in print, and I had the opportunity to sit down and spend a few minutes analyzing even more of the nitty-gritty of this new garbage handling deal. 

First, as with just about everything else I have bought in the last four years, it turns out the price of getting rid of my trash is going up. From $70.14 every three months to $93.27 every three months. That’s an increase of 33%. And it can go up as much as 5% a year after that.

Another item that caught my eye is that Bergmeier’s will be providing trash carts to everyone. Which seems a bit wasteful because just about everyone on our street already has their own cart – including us. Meaning we’ll either need to find more storage around our house for the about-to-be-useless garbage cart (basement? garage?), or our garbage cart can become garbage!

But the one change that caught my eye, and the one that relates strongly to the “trash to treasure” maxim, is the change involving what is known as “bulk waste” — all the stuff that’s too large or odd-shaped to fit in the garbage can. Starting next April, each customer can request free pickup of two bulk items, two times a year, whenever they want. 

Currently, bulk waste pickup in these townships is a twice-a-year scheduled event, once in the spring and once in the fall. The next pickup is the week of May 13 – 17, and the fall pickup is the week of Oct. 14 – 18. The amount of items they’ll pick up is essentially unlimited, with some restrictions: only one appliance, and only six tires, for example. I’ve already started queuing up junk items in the basement that will go out to the curb in two weeks. 

More than a decade ago, when we first moved to Ferguson Township from the Borough, I was disappointed to find out that the State College’s “put it out and we’ll take it” policy at the time was not carried over into the townships. Why should I have to store junk for months when I decide to throw it out? Why not the next trash pickup?

But over the years I’ve come to appreciate the organic nature of these scheduled-well-in-advance bulk pickups, and especially the “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” recycling aspect that has grown up around them. 

You see, when anyone can throw out their “bulk waste” at any time by either just putting it out with their regular trash or scheduling a personal pickup, the bulk items end up in the trash and filling up landfills. But the unintended genius of scheduling only two bulk pickups a year is that the “trash” now has a great opportunity to become someone else’s “treasure.” 

In the years we have lived in Ferguson Township, I have put untold numbers of items out for bulk pickup, always a few days before the pickup is to occur. As do many of our neighbors. What happens next is a testament to human ingenuity.

Cars, trucks and trailers will spend all week cruising up-and-down our streets, taking items that we have deemed trash, but to them are potential treasure. By the time the garbage truck cruises around on Thursday morning, usually there is nothing much left for them to take, save our regular trash can full of real garbage.

And that’s the beauty of these scheduled bulk waste pickups. I don’t know where the trash I set out ends up. Maybe in a flea market, maybe online, maybe used as parts for repairs, maybe built into something else, or maybe used as is. And maybe some of it does end up in a landfill. 

But the possibility of this trash being recycled into treasure only happens because of these bulk pickups. These treasure hunters will not spend every week driving every neighborhood looking for those rare chances that someone had scheduled their own personal bulk pickup that week. And why bother because with a two-item limit there won’t ever be much treasure out there. 

Which is why, between now and next year when this new waste contract goes into action, I would suggest that the local powers-that-be find some way to keep the scheduled-well-in-advance, twice-a-year bulk waste pickup. Locally, we are constantly hearing how we like to recycle and reduce the amount of trash we send to landfills. This is one of the most organic and interesting ways I’ve seen of doing that. And it’s all, as far as I can tell, the unintended genius of scheduled bulk pickups.

Let’s see if we can’t keep them and give one man’s trash as many opportunities as possible to become another man’s treasure.