I Met Workers Today

The first destination of our “recycling and sustainability day” of the immersion trip was the Habitat for Humanity (HfH). I liked Tommy’s introductory presentation that followed his warm welcoming words. Tommy is a volunteer coordinator at HfH with long-long-long beard, which has a story, and good sense of humor, which I also liked. After the tour around the office section we began to clean up the trash outside of the Restore construction market. Posing for photos with HfH volunteer T-Shirts we left the location.

Nothing was more exciting for me today than exploring the recycling companies of Springfield. The tour for the Household Chemical Collection (HCC) base guided by its worker named Drew was very calm, in my opinion. It is known, working in HCC requires a lot of patience and, of course, extra caution, because everything that comes there is flammable and always at the risk zone, however, Drew did a very nice job clearly explaining and demonstrating how everything works.

I had a great time watching how the giant excavators smash and crash all those huge old cars and refrigerators, turning them into big blocks of metal. Thanks to the guy who performed this procedure specifically for us. I recorded it. I also wanted to take the picture with Commercial Metal Company (CMC) staff in front of one of their pressed blocks, but they seemed to be so busy that I couldn’t even dare to ask. So we left, letting the workers of CMC do their daily job. All the blocks will eventually be sold, transported, and reused in some productions overseas.

What do we do with old computers? Well, the guys in green shirts with the Computer Recycling Company logo will gladly take every detail of your obsolete PC or Mac. No worries about your personal data, it will be lost forever and ever by physical destruction of the hard drive. Got some old printers? TVs? Bring them there.

Unfortunately, there always will be some leftover trash that can’t be reused. Unrecyclable stuff goes straight to the Springfield Sanitary Landfill, where it is daily pressed and mixed with land in order to properly conserve the environment. The underground methane that thousands pounds of buried trash produce is reused by the City Utilities Company which offers a variety of services including gas provision for residents of the counties nearby.

Overall March 13 of 2014 was full of other highlights including birthday wishes, road congratulations and, finally, delicious ice-cream at Andy’s.  

Samat Mambetshaev, Trip Participant