Waster

“ It is to be expected that the eternal vigilance which seizes every waste, once it has become such, putting it in places of usefulness, must contribute much toward the destruction of breeding places, and it may be these nations have been mindful of the wholesomeness of their practice and that many phases of the evolution of their waste disposal system have been dictated by and held fast to through a clear conception of sanitary needs. ”

“ True, there is a man employed to clear away the garbage; but, when this is done, they have no water, saving what they beg, and not a drop can they spare to wash down the gutters. Wherever a sunbeam alights, you see it steaming with the filth, and behold the golden ray dimmed with the vapoury and deadly exhalations. ”

“ Were I a farmer or an architect, I might discuss the question of the relative superiority of different manures, or the kind of structures in which the more unpleasant kinds should be stowed; but my object is rather to draw attention to the advantages of making use of products which are not merely waste at present, but very destructive to human life under the existing system. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You pull and pull until your spine begins to unravel at both ends, and your palms get so full of water blisters you feel as though you were carrying a bunch of hothouse grapes in each hand. And after going about nine miles you unwittingly anchor off the mouth of a popular garbage dump and everything you catch is second-hand. The sun beats down upon you with unabated fervor and the back of your neck colors up like a meerschaum pipe ”

“ The washer-women were among the happiest of these happy souls, and nowhere were seen prettier pictures than they made, clustered round the fountains or tanks by the way, scrubbing, slapping, singing, and gossiping, as they washed or spread their linen on the green hedges and daisied grass in the bright spring weather. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As these masses of rubbish also serve at the same time as general receptacles for the superfluities of the city, groups of half-famished dogs and myriads of flies are invariably collected about them; in the midst of which are seen lying very contentedly, or rolling about for diversion, swarms of little naked children, regardless of either, which one might almost fancy were actually produced by the fertilizing qualities of these heaps of putrid matter, as the monsters of old are asserted to have been from the slime and the mud of the Nile. ”

“ An ever-growing dust heap formed of thieves’ clothing and unlawful possessions, which nobody can cart away to distribute or bury out of sight for evermore—​an accumulating banquet spread for the moth, the rust, and the rat—​the contents of these rooms are far from pleasant to think of. ”

“ The wastage of paper throughout the country is appalling. Upon the completion of its designed function the material is either burned, consigned to dust-bin, or allowed to pursue an aimless journey at the mercy of the wind through our highways and byways. People of a thrifty turn of mind undoubtedly save their waste, disposing of it at intervals to itinerant collectors, who acquire the litter of the house in exchange for something more or less attractive, if not useful, in kind. ”

“ The impurities from the houses and the accumulation of litter from the beasts of burden are unpleasant sights to the passing stranger. He laments the want of a police as he goes along, and when the wind begins to blow his nose and eyes are too often exposed to a cloud of very unsavoury dust. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At present much of this waste is thrown into the dust-bin, there to fester and breed disease. Then there are old newspapers, ragged books, old bottles, tins, canisters, etc. We all know what a number of articles there are which are not quite bad enough to be thrown into the dust heap, and yet are no good to us. We put them on one side, hoping that something may turn up, and as that something very seldom does turn up, there they remain. ”

“ This waste matter when such food is eaten, is a source of irritation in the system—which in addition to the normal elimination of its own waste, has a more than double task imposed upon it, and is "stimulated" to undue exertion in the effort to rid itself of the foreign invader. ”

“ We have taken note of the great natural wastes: [Pg 315] how two-thirds of the wood cut is wasted, and how insects and fire destroy the standing timber; how the soil is washed down into the valleys, taking the best from the farms; how we are steadily robbing the soil of its most necessary elements; how our waters are unused and we pay for this non-use by the use of other resources that we can ill afford to spare; how millions of acres of land which might be profitably farmed lie useless for lack of water and other millions are useless because they are covered with water. ”

“ I have frequently been told by members of the working classes that it is no unusual thing for the dust-bins in their neighborhood to remain unattended to for months at a time; and, when they appeal to the dustmen in charge of any passing cart, they are either laughed at or met by a volley of abuse for their pains. ”

“ An investigation of the domestic refuse problem as it affects the country as a whole has revealed the circumstance of the contents of the dust-bin being tolerably consistent, whether it be drawn from a residential or manufacturing town, from the East-end or from the West-end, from the city or from the suburb. ”

“ Destruction and waste, greed and lust mark their course. Now they break into some lonely mill, terrify and coerce the miller into showing them his store, bake for themselves cakes thereof, befoul with urine all that they cannot use, and are gone again. ”

“ Three-fourths of the solid wastes that proceed from human dwellings—scraps of food, waste paper, worthless vegetables, worn-out utensils, bones, weeds, old boots and shoes, whatever unmanageable and unnamable rubbish appears—ought to be at once consumed by fire, for which purpose a small cremating furnace should be found in every house. ”

“ The original word is very significant: I will wipe off man from the earth (so some) , as dirt or filth is wiped off from a place which should be clean, and is thrown to the dunghill, the proper place for it. ”

“ If the scrupulous husbanding of waste refuse so universally practiced in these countries reduces the fly nuisance and this menace to health to the extent which our experience suggests, here is one great gain. ”

“ He found that poor creatures stolen from their homes were packed close, like bales of goods, in the dark holds of ships, where they were half choked by bad odors from accumulated filth, and where they could hardly breathe for want of air. The food allotted them was merely enough to keep them alive. ”

“ After a while he'll get so that he can dispose of several things at once, and the time may come when I'll have to look over the rubbish to be sure that nothing valuable has gone, because throwing away is just as insidious a habit as any other. ”

“ Water enough for them to wash with, we'll have—you know they're so dirty now that nine out of ten of their houses haven't even baths in them, the filthy little skunks! You know, the ones that have baths spit insults at the ones that haven't, instead of helping them to get them—and call 'em the Great Unwashed—You know. ”

“ In particular, objects are constantly thrown into rubbish-pits many years, perhaps even centuries, after those objects have passed out of use. Whenever, even in a village, an old cottage is pulled down or a new one built, old rubbish gets shifted to new places and mixed with rubbish of a quite different age. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He lived among the good-for-nothing white trash gathered along the river bottom, most of them wretches as lazy, as stupid, as ignorant, and as vicious as the snapping turtles that basked in the mud and the sun. ”

“ But the very circumstance that such waste has become compounded with other residues, many of which are worth reclamation, should be sufficient to induce us to regard sewage not as an incubus or danger, but as a mine worthy of development to its fullest extent. ”

“ All round them, by day, by night, stretches the huge, grey, grimy waste of streets, factory walls, chimneys, murky canals, [Pg 183] chapels, public-houses, hoardings, posters, butchers' shops—a waste where nothing beautiful exists save a pretty cat or pigeon, a blue sky, perhaps, and a few trees and open spaces. The children of the class above, too, of the small shop-people, the artisans—do they escape? ”

“ 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. ”

“ The word dirt in its strict sense comes from the Anglo-Saxon 'drit,' or excrement. 'Dirt,' then, is not earth or clean sand—not clean dirt, but dirty dirt, that is, matter soiled by some of the excreta of the human or animal body. Cleanliness must be insisted upon in a boys' Camp—not the cleanliness that makes a boy squeamish about working with his hands upon some necessary job, but cleanliness that makes him afraid of sharing his tooth brush or table utensils or his clothes. ”

“ Nearly all of the many thousands there were in dirty rags. The rain was pouring, and thousands were without shelter, standing in the mud in their bare feet, with clothes in tatters, of the most unsubstantial material, without blankets. I tell the truth, and Mr. Charles C. B. Watkins dare not deny it, when I say these men suffered bitterly for the want of clothing, blankets and other necessaries. ”

“ A squatter, if I may so call him, had built hastily by the road which crossed the waste, the word westen being Old English for a waste or desert, and "Western Bank" being merely a popular and erroneous way of explaining a forgotten word. ”

“ I suppose we ain’t made all alike; but one day I saw him pick up a child that had tumbled down in the road just outside the village; pull out his white handkerchief and wipe the mud off its knees and hands, then find a clean place to wipe its eyes with, give it a penny, I suppose, and then walk a little way with it back, holding his hand. ”

“ Doubtless it is to this earthward kinship and compliance with Nature in the savage that we are to ascribe his utter unconsciousness of and indifference to what we call offensive and revolting to the senses, — foul odors, uncleanliness, filth, vermin, parasites, etc. Regarding himself as akin to the elements, the soil, and the creatures around him, the savage did not recognize what we call dirt. Dirt has been well defined as valuable matter out of place. ”

“ Whatever has the principle of decay in it, is got rid of at once. All vermin meet their fate from these destroyers. Food, clothing, necessaries, superfluities, mere trash, and valuable property, are alike in their regard, and equally acceptable to their digestive powers. ”

“ The rust, the moth, and the burglar would make me uneasy, and fickle fortune would keep me in constant dread of poverty. No, I will seek heavenly treasures where the rust and the moth do not consume, nor the thief break through and steal. ”

“ VILLAGE SANITARY WORK.
It is a recently recognized but an old and universal truth, that human life involves the production of refuse matters, which, unless proper safeguards are taken, are sure to become a source of disease and death. The danger is not confined alone nor chiefly to that element of household waste which is most manifestly offensive, but in almost equal degree to all manner of organic refuse. ”

“ 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. ”