When our ancestors first settled in towns such as Easton, they arrived with their clothes on their backs, a few meager possessions, and perhaps some tools for either farming or plying the trade in which they earned their living. As they settled in and established their homes, they slowly acquired the necessities of life; each one either made by their own hand or purchased with monies they worked hard to earn. If something broke or became worn, they repaired it. Many items lasted a lifetime and were passed down to the next generation and beyond. Some were treasured for their memories, but most were valued for their utility. Disposing of something that still had a use was almost sinful – “waste not, want not” wasn’t just an idiom that was tossed around lightly; it was a way of life.
New construction often made use of old materials. Doors, windows, hinges, latches – even floor boards were reused whenever it was feasible. If a wagon wheel suffered some broken spokes, parts that were still usable made their way into a new one. Blacksmiths reshaped and reused worn metal items. Seamstresses mended worn and torn clothing. Cobblers mended boots by resoling and reheeling them to provide extended life. If a wooden axe handle broke, it became a source of heat when it was burned in the fireplace. About the only manmade items to be discarded were chards of glass and pottery that broke and were beyond repair.
Food almost never went to waste. It was too difficult to come by. Table scraps were either fed to the pigs or the family dog. There was no Blue Buffalo or Purina Dog Chow in the early 1800’s. Fido ate whatever the family gave him. Bones that didn’t make their way into the soup kettle were gnawed clean by the dog. Only the small bones of fish, fowl, and oyster shells made their way into the family midden (a shallow pit where items that couldn’t be disposed of by burning were generally buried).
During the middle and late 19th century, industrious entrepreneurs came up with ways to recycle what folks no longer had a use for. There were the “rag men” who traveled the countryside collecting bits and pieces of cloth and paper, both of which they could sell to those who produced cardboard. “Junk men” would take unwanted scrap metal that could be sold and melted down to make new products. “Bone pickers” would collect larger animal bones that could be used to make knife handles, buttons, and toys. In short, recycling, which many think of as being a late 20th century phenomenon, was born much earlier out of economic need and opportunity rather than mere social consciousness.
Whether you lived in the country or the city, food purchased at the store often arrived there in bulk and was then sold loose. Oranges and grapefruits arrived in wooden crates. Customers provided their own woven wooden baskets to carry these items home.
Need a gallon of molasses? You would bring your own stoneware ceramic jug and the grocer would fill it. Reusable wooden firkins were used to transport butter, cheese, pickles, salt, and even salted and smoked fish home from the market. Beer? Customers would bring their own small stoneware containers for the tavern keeper to fill and then seal with a cork.
By the early 1900’s, more and more items were being massed produced and available either in local stores or offered through catalogues produced by companies such as Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. Items from those mail-order firms would have been shipped packaged either in wooden crates or cardboard containers – both of which would have been easily disposed of by incineration should they be of little use for anything else.
Coffee, tea, biscuits, aspirin tablets, spices, candy, and tobacco for both chewing and rolling into cigarettes were all sold in metal containers that could be reused to hold a multitude of other items. Soda and milk were eventually sold in glass bottles that could be returned, cleaned, and reused. If it was sold prepackaged in its own container, that container was either made of metal, glass, or wood. All were reusable and seldom discarded.
Feed for the chickens came in burlap bags. Flour was packaged in either cotton or linen sacks. Those bags and sacks were then saved by the farmer’s wife, boiled, and sometimes bleached to remove any identifying lettering. They were then cut and sewn into clothing for the children.
A patent was issued in October 1924 for cotton sacks containing interesting patterns with brand names that would wash off so they could be repurposed and made into clothing. The George P. Plant Milling Co. in St. Louis used these patterns in their new line of “Gingham” flour. Executives of Plant Milling saw this as a unique marketing opportunity, thinking people would see the Gingham pattern and instantly know it was from their company. Since the sacks had been designed with clothing in mind, the company advertised that all the markings on the package, including the brand name, would easily wash away.
Other mills caught on to the tactic and then started developing their own fashionable packaging. From pastels to novelty prints, the other mills would compete to see which company could produce the most attractive cotton sacks.
There were very few products that came into the home in containers that were not 100 percent reusable in one form or another. This resulted in very little trash that required disposal.
During the early years of the 20th century the use of plastic became prevalent as cheap petroleum yielded additional chemicals that could be used to produce a variety of new products. Plastic was cheaper than metal, but it wasn’t as durable. Many of us still retain metal toys that our grandparents might have played with, but few of us still have plastic playthings from our own youth.
Additionally, as electric lines spread across the landscape, a new market emerged for all kinds of electrical gadgets from toasters to cooling fans and radios to refrigerators. More products to improve our lives. More products that would break and fail over time or simply become obsolete as technology constantly improved. In short, more items that weren’t easy to repurpose and reuse. More items that required some means of proper disposal at the end of their life cycle.
By the end of the Great Depression, practically every home had an incinerator of some kind behind the house. Whatever couldn’t be reused or composted for the garden was then burned. Some homes had fancy masonry incinerators while others had an old barrel with a couple of holes punched towards the bottom to let the rainwater drain out. The smell of burning trash permeated the air of many neighborhoods on a regular basis.
But some items, particularly those made of modern synthetic materials, didn’t turn to ash when burned. Those items needed to be disposed of in other manners. Municipally owned dumps – or what we prefer to call landfills today – became the norm in towns both big and small.
It wasn’t until 1939 when the residents of the town of Easton voted to fund a town dump. At a town meeting, voters approved a motion to spend $500 to purchase 12.2 acres of land on North Street just north of the intersection with Eden Hill Road. Lest anyone think that Easton was late to the game in this department, the Town of Redding was still without a dump in 1960!
During the first few years, town residents could bring their trash to the dump for free. After WWII, the town imposed a $1.00 fee for a two-year permit. A permit which no one checked since the dump had no regular employees and no gate to keep people out on nights and weekends.
By the early 1950’s, Easton saw its first commercial trash haulers begin their businesses. The first trash hauler was Ernie Barbieri, who operated his small truck out of his home on Sport Hill Road just north of the Union Cemetery. Two years later, Francesco “Sarge” Reppucci began picking up trash from his home base on Banks Road. As long as the town dump was in operation, the annual fee for those commercial haulers never exceeded $50. Just a handful of small trucks with three to five-yard bodies took care of all of Easton’s trash for nearly twenty years.
Fires at the dump became a regular occurrence. The odor, especially during the warmer months of the summer, was almost constant and always offensive. Open trash piles attracted rats in such large numbers that local teens hung out at the dump like it was a shooting gallery at the arcade. That kept the rat population somewhat at bay but created another nuisance – the incessant sound of gunfire. The town eventually kept an older excavator on site that someone from the road crew would operate on a part time basis to flatten out the trash and then cover it with sand and dirt helping to contain the odor and make it more difficult for the rats to find their dinner.
For most of the time the dump was in operation, there were no restrictions on what could be deposited there. Paints, chemicals, refrigerants leaking from discarded appliances all made their way into the soil.
In 1973, the State of Connecticut ordered the dump closed. The saturated land was by then leaching dangerous chemicals into nearby streams that eventually fed into the rivers that in turn flowed into area reservoirs. The town resisted, holding off the final closing of the facility until December 22, 1976. After that, the price of trash removal skyrocketed as haulers needed to pay fees many times higher than what the town had been charging all those years. Most of Easton’s trash went to Trumbull and was then transferred to Bridgeport for incineration.
Today, we see those giant green and blue Toter brand 64-gallon rolling trash bins lining our roads on pickup day. Able to hold ten times the amount of trash our parents generated just thirty or forty years ago; today we seem to throw away almost as much as we purchase. Our ancestors were known for being thrifty and resourceful. What will our legacy be?
