Random Things You Didn't Know About Garbage Men (19 items)

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  (#4) Some Towns Train Their Garbage Men to Spot Crime

  In Men at Work, garbage men Charlie Sheen and his real life bro Emilio Estevez (who also wrote and directed the film) uncover an illegal toxic waste dump after finding a body in a can on their route. A county in Florida thinks their garbage workers would also make good sleuths. They’re out on those mean streets every day, after all. Waste Management and Manatee County, in Florida, even train their trash collectors to spot and report suspicious activity.  

  "They're out early in the morning when most folks like myself are sleeping then they're out during the daytime in your communities or they've left home and gone to work," said Joe Vidovich, head of corporate security for Waste Management. "So, they're in a position to see what's going on in your neighborhoods when you're not there."  

  Other towns across the US also turn to their garbage collectors - as well as postal workers - to look for any kind of suspicious behavior.
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  (#16) Being a Garbage Man or Garbage Woman Is Not a Fall Back Career

  Generally, garbage collectors take great pride in their work and they don’t take kindly to people thinking of it as a throw a way job.
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  (#13) There's So Much Garbage on Everest, the Indian Army Had to Become Garbage Men

  Since the 1970s, thousands of pounds of garbage has collected over the 8,850 meter trek up the mountain. A 34 member team from the Indian army removed waste (mainly from Camp 1) in April of 2015. ”Sadly, Mount Everest is now ... called the world's highest junkyard," Maj. Ranveer Singh Jamval, the team leader said.  

  This isn’t the first garbage removal from Everest. Since 2008, Eco Everest Expedition makes an annual trek to bring down garbage from the mountain. Authorities in Nepal now require climber to carry out an extra 18 pounds of garbage in addition to their own human waste and trash.
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  (#19) Many Small Towns Had Piggeries for Food Waste

  In the early 1900s, most small towns had “piggeries,” small pig farms where raw and cooked food waste was fed to the swine.
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  (#3) Garbage Men and Women Find a Lot of Drugs

  The trash heap is THE place to toss your stash when on the run from the cops, so garbage men are not phased by finding all manner of drugs - and sometimes those drugs are explosive.  

  One garbage man recounted an interesting story about just such an explosion on Reddit: "My guys called me frantic one day after an explosion in the hopper of the truck. Thankfully no one was injured, but I called the fire department and police always come on fire calls too. Turns out they had been watching the house we were in front of because the guy was cooking meth. He threw away some of the ingredients and the pressure when it compacted caused it to explode. The best part was the fact that the guy sat out front watching the show in a bathrobe. He eventually got dressed and came back out. When he was arrested he had drugs in his pants. Apparently he didn't own any pants without drugs in the pockets."
  
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  (#14) Lots of NYC Trash Has to Be Removed by Hand

  Between midnight and 5 am, garbage collectors have to remove all of the garbage in New York's Chinatown. Most of it has to be hand carried. Mike Rowe found out just how hard it is to carry hundreds of pounds of garbage up and down stairs for five hours.

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