Garbage

“ No matter how large the garbage pile, no matter how many dead dogs, cats, and donkeys in a village street, no matter how unspeakable the offal, it all vanishes as completely as though it had been burned. ”

“ Domestic garbage and filth of every kind is thrown into the streets, covering their surface, filling the gutters, obstructing the sewer culverts, and sending forth perennial emanations which must generate pestiferous disease. In winter the filth and garbage, etc., accumulate in the streets, to the depth sometimes of two or three feet. ”

“ The food wastes of the kitchen and table, consisting of decomposable organic matter, and commonly known as garbage, require separate disposal; and the same is true of ashes, waste paper, and other rubbish. Street dirt must be collected and removed, and the streets must be sprinkled to keep down the dust which is inevitable even with the best sweeping. ”

“ The garbage boxes are a perpetual source of nuisance in the streets, filth and offal being thrown all around them, pools of filthy water in many instances remaining in the gutters, and having their source in the garbage boxes. ”

“ Have a separate can or barrel for ashes and all glass and metal rubbish. The fair criterion of good housekeeping is the amount of garbage. A large amount of garbage means carelessness and waste in the kitchen. ”

“ Nothing should be put into ashcans except ashes. Garbage is the waste from food, or any substances which are wet or subject to decomposition. Trash is papers, cans, bottles, egg shells, glass, hair, dust, broken objects of all sorts and kindred things. This class may have to be subdivided several times for the convenience of people who remove it, but the three main divisions in house waste are made not on account of requirement but for the sake of neatness and decency. ”

“ If you live in the city the garbage man will collect all waste.
The garbage can must be kept thoroughly clean. It should be rinsed and scalded whenever it is empty, so that there will be no bad odors about the kitchen. Find out how garbage is taken care of in your town. How can you help to keep your neighborhood clean? What should be done if there is carelessness about garbage?
Taking Care of Woolen Things
Housekeepers must fight moths as well as flies. The clothes moth loves to lay its eggs in wool. It is very keen in searching out bits of wool and finding a place for its baby to thrive. ”

“ The removal of this material is a matter of public convenience rather than of public health protection. As a rule it is drawn away and either used for filling marsh land or incinerated. |Garbage.| Another form of waste is garbage, which includes the discarded material from markets, bakeries, hotels, restaurants, and private dwellings. This garbage decomposes quickly and must be gathered at frequent intervals. In some communities the garbage is disposed of by incineration; in others it is sold to farmers for feeding swine ”

“ Garbage and ash cans should be covered. The practice of upsetting ash or garbage cans is one which no young citizen should allow in his neighborhood, for sanitary reasons. The best results in summer street cleaning are obtained by washing or flushing the streets, for thus the dirt containing germs is prevented from getting into the air. The garbage is removed in carts, and part of it is burned in huge furnaces. The animal and plant refuse is cooked in great tanks; from this material the fats are extracted, and the solid matter is sold for fertilizer. ”

“ In most cities tall garbage cans are required and the garbage is drained and wrapped in paper, the ashes are placed in cans or containers. They are used for filling in low lands while the garbage is taken away and buried or burned. ”

“ In some of the cities of the Far East, animals are depended upon as garbage collectors. Hungry dogs and cats, and in some places, even pigs, rove the streets, picking up for food the refuse which is thrown out.
It is no wonder that dreadful diseases break out among the people, is it? How unhealthful our own cities would be if we had no garbage collectors. ”

“ The charity of the garbage-pile led them into bad habits, upset their digestions, and ruined their dispositions. But their appetite for garbage increased until they became food pensioners and garbage drunkards. Like some humans they enjoy being pensioners and insist on being supplied. ”

“ Householders swept the filth of their apartments into the streets, and threw garbage there also, where, with the ground of rush and straw, a most intolerably filthy condition was produced, which rain modified, but did not remove. Moreover, people seldom bathed their bodies or washed their clothes. ”

“ WASTE AND GARBAGE.
The attractiveness of a rural home depends largely upon the promptness with which all kinds of waste material are disposed of. The abundance of space around the house is a great temptation for the members of the household to use it as a place for storing rubbish and useless, worn-out things. Sifted ashes are easily utilized in earth closets and upon walks and roads, to make them compact and firm. ”

“ Don’t fail to provide a covered, leak-proof metal can for garbage, and to keep it covered at all times.
5. Don’t sweep or throw dirt, rubbish, waste-paper, grass-cuttings, fruit-peelings, or anything else into the street. Put them in tight rubbish receptacles or tie them into bundles to be taken up by the collector.
6. Don’t forget that all dirt or rubbish, and every scrap of paper carelessly thrown into the street must later be picked up and removed, and that the taxpayer must pay for having this done. Why?
QUESTIONS
How do streets become dirty? ”

“ It is seamless and finished in white enamel. But even this can is hardly a substitute for the incinerator. The average kitchen isn’t the best lighted and sunniest room in the house, and what is often left in the garbage can (if not carefully lined with new paper every time it is emptied) is a real menace to health.
If you live in the country, the garbage can is usually in the yard and tours to it are demanded daily. If it is cold, it is a hardship, and if it is warm it is a hardship, too! The garbage freezes in the winter ”

“ In consequence, all refuse, garbage, and excrements of at least 50,000 persons are thrown into the gutters every night, so that, in spite of all street sweeping, a mass of dried filth and foul vapours are created, which not only offend the sight and smell, but endanger the health of the inhabitants in the highest degree. ”

“ They consist almost invariably of a flood of water containing but a small percentage of refuse food, urine, soap, filth of the laundry, grease—everything, in fact, except fecal matter and the coarser garbage and ashes—constituting the waste of the household. ”

“ A garbage can should be cleaned as often as it is emptied, and should with its surroundings be watched all the time, lest the cover is left off or any scraps or splashes are left outside to draw flies and make disagreeable odours.
A kitchen in which much work is done needs a thorough weekly cleaning. ”

“ Note.—Relate this topic to Cleanliness, Helpfulness, Safety, Respect.
V. THE GARBAGE COLLECTOR
1. Garbage—waste food: Care not to throw away any food that can be used.
2. The garbage can covered. Why?
3. The relation of decayed garbage to health—flies.
4. The garbage collector: What he does for us; when and how he makes his collections—the covered iron wagon; what is done with the garbage.
5. Importance of observing city regulations.
Note.—Relate this topic to Cleanliness, Helpfulness, Safety, Respect, Thrift.
[Pg 257]
VI. THE ASH COLLECTOR AND THE RUBBISH COLLECTOR
1. ”

“ Ashes and Garbage.—To say that only liquid substances should be poured down waste-pipes seems a needless repetition of what everybody knows, yet it is knowledge constantly disregarded and sometimes forgotten even by careful people. Waste substances not suitable for the pipes have to be somewhat classified. Cities and towns have different regulations for the disposal of waste and sometimes one is required to do a good deal of sorting in compliance. ”

“ They are really the scavengers of the earth's surface, not actually carrying off garbage, but rather transforming it, and, in the process, not merely destroying it, but changing it so as to make it available for plant-food. ”

“ The almost universal practise in America is to collect garbage during the daytime. Of those from which facts have been received and whose systems are described in the accompanying tables, only two collect all garbage at night. One collects at night during the summer and four collect at night in the business section. ”

“ Iron cages are sometimes used at the dump for burning the valueless combustible rubbish.
Some cities are successfully operating incinerating plants for the destruction of garbage and combustible rubbish; others have plants which burn the garbage and rubbish and a part of the ashes. ”

“ The word 'garbage' shall be held to include every refuse accumulation of animal, fruit, or vegetable matter that attends the preparation, use, cooking, dealing in or storing of meat, fish, fowl, food, fruit, or vegetables, including dead animals and condemned foods found within the city limits. ”

“ In this respect they look back with unlimited disgust upon the people of your day with their filthy horses and dogs perambulating and befouling the streets, their stables, stores and meat shops full of the odors of decaying vegetable and animal matter, their accumulations of ashes and cinders and dust, and of filth and garbage in foul cess pools, barrels, gutters, vaults and sewers, their personal habits of eating and drinking with their sequelae and the necessary cooking and dishwashing, and their smoking and tobacco chewing and spitting. ”

“ The Danger to Wells from Household Waste. Every house has, like our bodies, a certain amount of waste, which must be got rid of. Some of this material can, of course, be fed to pigs and chickens, and in that way disposed of. But the simplest and easiest thing to do with the watery parts of the household waste is to take them to the back door and throw them out on the ground, while table-scraps and other garbage are thrown into the long grass, or bushes—a method which is still, unfortunately, pursued in a great many houses in the country and the suburbs of towns. ”

“ Their cities must have narrow, unwatered streets, foul with accumulated garbage. Their houses must be ill-drained, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated. Their subjects must be ill-washed, ill-fed, ill-clothed. ”

“ It has been called our chief national sin. It is said that a family in France can live in comfort on what an American family in the same circumstances ordinarily throws away. An average load of garbage in New York City has been shown to contain fifty dollars' worth of good food materials.
WHAT SMALL SAVINGS WILL DO Investigations by the Food Administration showed that there is enough glycerine in a ton of garbage to make explosives for 14 shells, enough fat and acid to make 75 bars of soap, and enough fertilizer to grow 8 bushels of wheat. ”

“ The burning of garbage, the discharge of waters into cesspools, or, in temporary camps, the discharge of wastes to distant points through the agency of a cheap sewage pipe will insure safety to campers, will lessen the trials of flies and mosquitoes, and will add but little to the expense. ”

“ Why do we have garbage cans? Where do we keep them?
What does the garbage man do? Are you glad there are garbage men to take away the garbage?
Make a little song to thank the garbage man for helping us keep things nice and clean.
Riddles:
A little house full of meat,
No door to go in and eat.
A nut
Four divisions in a casket;
There’s a leaf in every basket.
Walnut
[54]
AT THE GROCERY STORE
Bobby and Betty were up early next morning.
“We are going to the grocery store today,” said Betty when she came down stairs.
“Hurrah!” cried Bobby. “I’ll spend my penny. Here it is. ”

“ When I see men, women and children poking over the masses of evil-smelling rubbish on the mammoth dump-heaps that deface the landscape near some of our great cities, or going from house to house collecting old iron or rubber or newspapers, or picking over the slag along the railways for chance lumps of coal, I wish that there were some way of getting them away into the woods where firewood is rotting and doing harm besides, a waste that works both ways, you see. ”

“ Waste papers, rubbish, greasy cloths, oily waste and rags should be destroyed. They should never be allowed to collect in cellars, attics, or closets, under the stairs or in the yard. Keep the whole house clean. Dust, dirt, and rubbish are fire-breeders. [Pg 122] This is especially true in factories, shops, fruit and grocery stores, schoolhouses, churches, and all public buildings. It is cheaper to throw away barrels, boxes, papers, sawdust, painter's cloths, old rags—waste of any kind—than to burn it up by setting the house on fire. ”

“ Others, as refuse food, human and animal remains, and excretal and many kinds of waste materials from workshops and factories, are deleterious chiefly because they are not removed, or destroyed chemically, so as to remove them in an innoxious gaseous form, or so to fix them as to prevent them forming noxious gases. ”

“ MOST of the substance we call the rubbish of our houses finds its way sooner or later into the dust-bin, and thence into the dust-man's cart, which conveys it to the dust-contractor's yard; and there we are for the most part contented to lose sight of it. It is worthless to us, and we are thankful to be rid of it, and think no more of it. But no sooner does it reach its destination in the yard than our rubbish becomes a valuable commodity. ”

“ Abolish Dirt We should like to see one generation brought up to hate dirt. Every child ought to be taught that clean hands and face and clean clothes help to a clean life. There are too many homes on this earth that human beings live in that are dirty, in which those three household gods—the broom, the mop, and the dust-rag—have no place.
Children should be taught to drive dirt out of the house as they would a mad dog. Dirt is the food of disease. It is the enemy of health and happiness. Abolish dirt. ”