As you clean up after holiday parties and gift-giving, the owner of an Iowa garbage company has some suggestions. Tony Colosimo is C-E-O of Artistic Waste Services, a trash-collection company in central Iowa. He says it’s not a good idea to stack up the boxes that came with expensive electronics and other gifts, because on display out at the curb they’ll show an enterprising thief just what valuables are in your home.
Colosimo says he learned early on in the waste industry that “trash is like a fingerperint,” and tells anyone a lot about you. Those big boxes advertising valuable items should be cut up, or better yet taken to a recycling center yourself, so nobody can tell where they came from. If you have lots of those containers and cartons, he says you’ll have to do something about them anyway.
He says big pieces of cardboard that came with a big-screen T.V. or piece of furniture should be cut into smaller pieces, three feet square at the most. They cause problems to collectors, whose pickup system isn’t really made to handle five-foot cardboard boxes. Also from long experience in the trash-hauling business and its problems, Colosimo has another suggestion.
If you got a package that came packed in those styrofoam “peanuts,” please wrap them up in a sealed bag or container of some kind. Otherwise when the trash collectors come around, they’re sure to blow all over, on a windy winter day. Colosimo says when it comes to the volume of wrappings and other stuff that just won’t fit in your garbage container — what’s the hurry? .
He says there’s no need to dispose of it all right away. “We’re talking about paper and wrappers, materials that don’t spoil,” Colosimo points out. “So to put less burden on the collectors, put some out this week and next week — they can do it over a number of weeks.”