Treasures in a Garbage Can (1960s)

[Music] the [Music] when you toss away a can or a bottle or the scraps from your dinner table the chances are that you don't think much about it nobody thinks much about it but it piles up your refuges and your neighbors The Refuge of all the people around you we move it out of our buildings into our streets and alleys hundreds of tons a day if we left it there it would pile up until it might in time drive us from our city ugly dirt dangerous and unhealthy [Music] [Music] but early every morning before most of us are up these men start out to handle the [Music] problem two men to a truck they work as a team every day they drive together in a constant battle to clear their City it's a tough day's work but it has to be done to keep our city clean in this city everyone helps the garbage men we separate our refuges into two containers one for garbage the food food scraps and waste from our tables the other for bottles and tin cans the things we can't burn we carry our cans and boxes to the curb to save the garbage men time and to cut down the cost of collection every day we see these trucks moving through our streets and alleys we watch these men picking up our refuge can by can but how many of us really think about them and the job they do what happens to what we throw away is it all wasted let's look at the trucks they're designed to be clean efficient and cheap this type is meant to haul food waste only not tin cans or glass its metal cover is kept closed in traffic in between collection areas from its step the loader can quickly pick up the cans we've put out for him [Music] when a piggy bank breaks we separate the money from the glass the money goes into your pocket and the glass should go into the rubbish box but sometimes we forget to separate our refu and carelessly throw a piece of glass into the can for food scraps this truck only picks up garbage leaving tin cans and bottles behind [Music] [Music] when a garbage truck is full it returns to the collection yard to be weighed 3 tons per truck hundreds of truckloads a day these men have finished their garbage rout so the dispatcher has assigned them to a different truck to pick up rubbish he coordinates the whole job like a military campaign every crew must clear a different area each day and the dispatcher records the area they've covered on a district map the crew empties the truck into an elevated [Music] Hopper they use a winch to lift the truck bed because this saves us the cost of buying dump [Music] trucks the hose carries water under high pressure [Music] after each load they flush the inside of the truck and now because they're through with this truck for the day they also wash the cab and cover [Music] garbage is transferred from this Hopper within a few minutes after it's received it's sold to private contractors they move it quickly out of the city in their large covered trucks [Music] these pigs are waiting for their dinner here it comes at [Music] last like healthy pigs everywhere they're always [Music] hungry these pigs are fed the scraps of food that people don't eat they live in clean pens with shade and running water and every week a government agent inspects them to make sure that they're healthy and well fed each pen opens into a concrete feeding alley [Music] thousands of pigs like these grow fat on food that would otherwise be wasted food we separate and save for them at home [Music] but a tin can or a piece of glass isn't good to eat that's why we separate our refuges this broken piggy bank shouldn't be here but [Music] here our crew collects bottles and tin cans in a different kind of truck and the truck is full Lake covered with cvas I [Music] [Applause] [Music] metal glass and other rubbish is sold to her byproducts company as it moves through their plant a sorter removes many useful objects for special treatment such as tires scrap iron paint buckets wire and bulky tin you can find almost anything on this belt if you wait long enough [Music] this is a magnetic roller it pulls everything made of iron like tin cans off the belt leaving glass and other objects to continue along the line some bottles like these are set aside they'll be returned to manufacturers who will sterilize them and use them again this job takes sharp eyes and close attention the rest of the glass is sorted into two large bins one for colored glass the other for clear glass [Music] toys are also [Music] save meanwhile cans separated by the magnet in this roller Move Along another belt cans are stored in this Hopper from it they're drawn off into a furnace where labels are burned off [Music] as they cool the black and cans move up on a bucket elevator toward a shredding machine buky metal that has been pulled out by the sorder is called riff raft it's fed into a heavy duty Shredder this Riff Raff is chopped up by rotating Steel knives [Music] all this metal the metal we throw away is saved after it's burned and shredded we load it into railroad cars and ship it to the copper mines there it's used to extract Copper from copper ore by precipitation this discarded metal is vital in making the copper that's so important to us [Music] all this mountain of glass is glass that you have thrown away [Music] after the glass is broken and washed these men sort through it to remove Corks And bottle [Music] caps clean broken glass is called cullet it's melted down and used to make new bottles there's some cullet in all ordinary glass so it goes bottles broken glass color and new bottles again [Music] nothing is wasted even discarded toys are collected from all over the [Music] city they're repaired by volunteer workers so that children can play with them again every toy is cleaned and given a personal touch [Music] the [Music] when the work are finished they send these toys to toy Lending Centers throughout the city there kids can come in and borrow them like books from a public library when a boy or girl is shown that he takes good care of these borrowed toys he can adopt one for his very own [Music] because we separate our refuges nothing is wasted the food we can't eat is fed to pigs old bottles from our rubbish boxes are used to make new glass the tin cans we throw away help to make valuable copper and broken toys play again so when you toss away a can or a bottle or the scraps from your dinner table remember to separate them carefully because with your help a good garbage collection system can turn everything you throw away into treasure for us all [Music]