Page 14 RAIN June/July 1983 THE GAME OF LANDFILL SALVAGE by Daniel Knapp Recycling—a word not even in the dictionary before 1970— has expanded, so to speak, to fill the waste available. There is a fascinating, nearly obsessive world of recyclers—second hand junkies, scavengers, scroungers, and waste-not-want-not metaphysicians. To many people, recycling has become a normal way of life. At least, many people have learned to do some basic sorts in the households such as separating bottles, cans, newspapers, and maybe compost. But beyond this simple and practical recycling, there is a more complex world. Recycling advocates are, after all, dealing with prickly sociological Ipolitical issues that go to the heart of the meaning of civilization. When and how something gets thrown away brings up euthanasia-like questions—when is a thing dead? The question of throwing things “away” brings up the question ofjust where is "away"? And finally, something graphically illustrated by the following short piece by Dan Knapp, is what rights do individuals have to "throw things away?" Dan Knapp is one of those salvage metaphysicians. He has been a sociology professor, worked with Oregon Appropriate Technology, and most recently, was a founding member of Urban Ore, a Berkeley-based recycling business. Dan has been involved in running the salvaging concession at the Berkeley dump. In this excerpt from a longer piece with the same title, Knapp introduces the politics of salvage at dumpyards through a bri^ overview and a personal experience which we feel brings out the curious world of dumpyards where people's physical and psychological "junk drawers" are exposed and the dump- yard scavengers become barefoot psychoanalysts.—SJ Landfill salvage is a contest, where one group of people is trying to dispose of things, and another group of people is trying to save these same things for future use. At any dump where salvage is allowed or encouraged, there will be hundreds of encounters daily where the dynamic of waste becoming wealth works through its motions by varying paths. The scavenger wants to be the first to go through the load, pulling the surprises, the valuables, the unusual, the immediately useful. The dumper usually wants to dump and run, but sometimes is caught by the humor, the incongruity, the sheer fantastic intensity of the disposal scene, and stays to chat, to help, to ask or answer questions. A good scavenger looks for the “good loads," which are sometimes identifiable only by subtle clues: a dull green/blue gleam seen through a tangle of crushed and broken lumber may turn out to be two dozen feet of copper plumbing—if it can be had before it slides down Here was a person who was dumping out his past, cleaning away the things that would most remind him of what he wanted to forget. The dumping was a catharsis, a fulfillment, perhaps even a vengeance. into the pit. Convincing the driver that the picker should mount the load and pull the copper is an artful process requiring tact, authority, and quick dexterity. Managing a composition study at a transfer site in Lane County, Oregon, each hour, I would perform a "level scan." This consisted of noting the location, name, and frequency of all large, visible objects at the surface of the transfer bin on a grid. With my clipboard in hand, I often had a chance to observe people unloading their wares. This particular transfer site operated a county "no salvage rule," with a caretaker on hand to enforce the
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