Author's Note: Prompt suggested by CJ.
T is for Trash
Trash management in the national parks had always been complicated, but it was even more of a pain in some of the remote bases. For places most of these places the solution was to simply have the staff pack the garbage out to a location where the sanitation trucks could actually get it…but of course, that was far too simple for the members of the Piston Peak Air Attack Base. They had to figure out some way to make the whole thing a game.
"Alright, it is time for the weekly weighing." Maru called over base's loudspeaker. "Grab all the trash cans and head to the main hangar."
The scramble and din blossomed across the base every member collected the trash from the cans that were their responsibility, then headed to the designated spot next to the main hangar where they would do their final sort and see the amount of waste that they had produced over the past week.
There were of course rules to this game. Anything that could be composted, recycled on base, or safely burned at the next bonfire, didn't count towards the overall weight. Instead, the weight only included that they were going to have to backhaul back to the lodge. All of those materials were sorted into piles of recyclables and trash…under Maru's watchful eye of course because the mechanic was loathed to throw away anything that might be useful later…and then the bags were weighed. Once the last bag was weighed Maru would divide the weight by the number of residents on base to calculate the damage.
"9.6 pounds per person." The mechanic said with a slight bounce on his tires. "A bit higher than last week, but I think Tuesday's walking tacos were probably the culprit there."
There were nods all around. Some of the vehicles were clearly fine with their trash levels. The average American did produce about 4.4 pounds of trash a day or just over 30 pounds of trash a week. Compared with that average everyone on base was doing pretty well. But for the smokejumpers, pretty well wasn't nearly enough. So as the vehicles worked to load that week's trash onto Cabbie so it could take the short trip to the lodge, they bickered among themselves, trying to figure out a way to beat their personal trash records in the coming week.
End Note: So this one was a short one, but one I could really relate to. I have lived at a number of bases that required our trash to be backhauled and we always had to get creative when doing it. But now that we have taken on this challenge, what word prompt suggestions do you have for the letter U?
