You know, 46,000 of anything’s right much. Of course, a quarter-acre lot priced at that might turn folks away. But $46,000 in cash would turn heads! If a golfer offered to bet that much on a putt, or a frivolous gambler bet a particular icicle would drip 20 times in a single minute, most folks would back off. But something very familiar to all of us weighs 46,000 pounds. It’s garbage.

It is not Winston-Salem’s or Charlotte’s or New York City’s — it’s ours. Believe it or not, the Alleghany County landfill processes that much trash and garbage — not counting used motor oil, metal and dead appliances — every day it’s open. Yes, 46,000 pounds is the average weight of just one trash-loaded trailer, and occasionally, two leave there the same day!

The landfill, which is really a transfer station, was started in the mid-70s, and it’s open six days a week, 52 weeks a year. They’re closed for Christmas Day and Thanksgiving, but that’s it.

If we fill two trailer loads just once a month, more than 12 million pounds of our discards wind up in distant landfills every year. From another perspective, that’s just over 1,100 pounds a year per Alleghany resident. Whew! It makes your arms sore at the thought of carrying that much stuff from the store, to the car, to the house, to the garbage can, and at last, to the curb or landfill.

If you haul and dump your own trash and garbage, you’ve crossed paths with Larry Taylor and the landfill crew. Two teams split the week in half, each working three days from 7 o’clock in the morning until 7:45 p.m.

Recycling newspaper, cardboard, glass, metal, and assorted plastic bottles, will introduce you to Roger Brady, who flattens and bales the boxes and makes sure the recyclables wind up in the right bins.

Worn-out appliances, water heaters, and such are called “white goods.” They’re recycled, too, as is a trailer full of metal.

The town’s garbage trucks make 800 to 1,000 roadside stops every week! Hopping in and out probably wears out seat covers faster than the trucks use up tires. Trash from residential areas is collected on Tuesdays; that from businesses, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Not long ago, heavy snows fell on two consecutive Tuesdays, backing up schedules and trash collection.

Town residents can spend just 50 cents a month and receive a wheeled, heavy-duty garbage can the collection trucks lift mechanically. Rolling heavy trash and garbage to the curb sure beats dragging it there in our cheap green and black plastic tubs. But either way, it has to be at curbside by 7 a.m. on the pickup morning.

Up until the early 70s, there was a real landfill a good distance behind where the funeral home now stands. If you’ve never seen another recycled landfill, then you haven’t been around Charlotte’s outdoor music pavilion off Highway 49 North. Across town, folks play golf, soccer and tennis at Renaissance Park, on West Tyvola Road. That area was a huge landfill, too, and it was used for years.

In Florida and New York, marshy areas strain impurities out of liquid garbage. A quickly-spreading plant called “duckweed” chokes ponds to the point that fish can’t live in them, but the leafy vegetation thrives in polluted water, absorbing contaminants as it grows. When the weed mass fills the pond, it’s cut, shredded, and used as an organic fertilizer. A man in Charlotte is so impressed with the process that his car’s license plate reads “Duckweed.” He can tell you all you’d like to know on the subject.

An old book entitled “The Cocktail Hour in Jackson Hole” described the way that Wyoming town handled wintertime’s trash collection decades ago. At the first serious snowfall, the Jackson Hole Sanitation Department took his wife to Florida until late spring. According to the book’s author, residents just tossed their garbage into the yard, where it froze solid in minutes and was soon covered with the white and fluffy snow. Come warmer weather, they’d load it all into garbage cans and Mr. Sanitation Department would haul it off. Now that would make your arms hurt!

Next time you’re at the landfill, take time to thank the folks for the job they do. And they don’t get winters off!