As a teenager in Quebec, Simon Paré-Poupart (b. 1985) liked school, and reading, and role-playing games. Paré-Poupart was sure he'd be an intellectual some day and he was right. Simon completed graduate studies in sociology and international business, and has work experience as a journalist and social worker. He's also a garbageman.
Author Simon Paré-Poupart
Simon's trashman career began at age eighteen, when his stepfather, whose world was the gym, kept telling Simon "Be a man." When Simon asked how he could be a man, his stepfather said, 'Try doing a run behind a garbage truck. That's supposed to be a tough job!"
So in summer 2003, Paré-Poupart became a runner - a guy who runs behind the truck picking up garbage. Little did Simon know the job would put him through college and university and that he'd "keep right on throwing trash, where the physical challenge, camaraderie, and steady income balance out the intellectual satisfactions of other jobs in journalism, research and social services."
Simon Paré-Poupart throwing trash.
Paré-Poupart tells his story in a series of anecdotes about himself, his co-workers, the trash-disposing public, and the garbage industry. Garbage is a dirty, often unscrupulous business. Besides household bins and bags, Simon observes, "Nighttime is when construction trucks roam the streets to illegally dump their waste...That means our routes are littered with big bags full of glass and sharp nails. They're so heavy you have to prop them against your legs to lift them...You don't know when you've cut yourself until you feel the warm blood running down your leg."
Construction Waste.
Paré-Poupart notes garbage collection is a family business, passed on from father to son, relative to relative, and that the job often inspires loyalty. As an example, Simon mentions a co-worker called Rock'nRoll, who was still driving a garbage truck at age seventy - with an IV drip in the cab. Rock'nRoll had throat cancer and was administering his own treatment. Simon writes, "And his two sons were just like him: proud and plenty scrappy."
Real-life brothers Charlie Sheen (left) and Emilio Estevez play garbagemen in the comedy 'Men at Work' (1990)
Many trash collectors are marginalized men who might drink, smoke weed, take speed, use drugs, sleep in the street, have dysfunctional home lives, be ex-convicts, etc. [Note: there are very few women on garbage trucks.] Paré-Poupart has worked with all manner of garbagemen, and he writes about them with empathy, describing trashmen as nonconformists out of necessity, rebels without a cause, chaotic, pathetic, and fiercely independent.
Runners working on a garbage truck
One of Paré-Poupart's memorable colleagues is called Spandex, for the shorts he wears. Spandex runs behind a truck shirtless, in flip-flops and bike shorts, and "He talks to the trash. It's like he'd rather have a conversation with a garbage bag full of vegetable peels or broken bottles than human beings. He tells the garbage all about the weather and fills it in with what's new in his life...he also asks the garbage how it's doing, despite the cold, mud, and heat, and the worms eating away at what few shards of dignity [Spandex] is clinging to. How did Spandex get into this unusual habit? No one really knows. Some say it's the outcome of a life stacking up failure after failure, a sense of shame, a response to the mockery of others. Of course, it could also just be good old-fashioned substance abuse."
Paré-Poupart also touches on the business end of waste management. He writes that many municipalities have been pressured to subcontract garbage collection to private entities, and this pattern holds in Greater Montreal as well. Simon observes, the deregulation of waste management has been filled by major conglomerates or organized crime, and frequently some combination of the two - and entrusting waste management to gangsters has repercussions. "In Naples, Italy, the mafia has buried toxic waste everywhere, creating crisis after scandal for years. In an area known as the 'triangle of death,' cancer rates have soared, fields are poisoned, the rivers stink. It's a plague."
On 'The Sopranos' TV series, mafioso Tony Soprano runs a waste management business
With regard to corporations, "massive corporations are good at finding loopholes in laws and and regulations...and apply pressure to create a legislative environment favorable to their interests." For his part, Paré-Poupart likes this just fine. He says, "I hate the very idea of the over-regulated life of civil servants...it just doesn't work for me...From where I stand, none of these management systems listens to the garbagemen themselves; none of them trusts our experience, considers making us part of the actual waste management processes, or cares about our culture." Simon adds, "I dream of a world where the castoffs of society self-manage the project of managing its waste."
A waste management corporation
A whole other area of waste management is recycling, which is an industry of its own, but one that doesn't work well. In 2021, Paré-Poupart worked for a recycling company, and this is how he describes a sorting center: "Wherever I turn my head, I see mind-boggling heaps of garbage. There's glass all over the place, seagulls perched on bales, and the whole site is so cluttered that vehicles can barely get around. Trucks are driving on a layer of loose waste, crushing it...it's utter chaos."
A trash recycling site
In addition, North America sends recycling to China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, where poor workers sort through paper, plastic, human waste, and other things. Recently, China curtailed imports because of contamination with useless things like cement, which increases the weight, and thus the cost to China. (There's no honor in the recycling business.)
Some Canadian trash is sent to the Philippines
Many people (including Paré-Poupart's mother) don't understand the job he's chosen. Simon writes, "The world of garbage is a Wild West, and that's exactly what I love about it. I love straddling the fine line between dirty and clean. I love the joyful chaos of garbagemen, our anarchic spirit and vague desperation...It gives me a space of freedom I can't find anywhere else." The author goes on, "It seems eminently reasonable to me to maintain a gray area, one where those who struggle to find their place in society can form a community...a universal brotherhood of trash."
Paré-Poupart is a "freegan" who collects trash even when he's not working. Simon writes, "If you pass me on the street on my day off, there's a good chance I'll have a piece of salvaged junk in my hands. I'm a gleaner, a picker, a collector...When there's something I need, I'll often put off buying it...[and] I'll find exactly what I'm looking for on the side of the road." The salvaged items are used, sold, given away, or recycled. In fact, Simon has bought fewer than five pieces of clothing in the last twenty years. LOL
Simon Paré-Poupart is a freegan who scavenges trash for his own use
Paré-Poupart mentions other aspects of garbage pickup as well, such as the disrespect of the public; working in storms, snow, cold, and heat; overloaded/overweight bins and bags; injuries on the job; and so on. The author also provides a brief discourse on the HORRIFIC STINK of cities in the Middle Ages, where the streets were repositories for every kind of refuse...and there were no garbagemen.
Cities in the Middle Ages had sanitation problems
For a quick overview of garbage, you can't go wrong with this book, which is informative and fun.
Simon Paré-Poupart wrote the book in Quebec French and it's been translated into English by Pablo Strauss.
Thanks to Netgalley, Simon Paré-Poupart, and Melville House for an ARC of the book.
Rating: 4 stars
