Dear Action Line,
It is currently one of my favorite times of year in Durango, at least as far as the collection of free items goes. Yes, I am talking about spring cleanup. I have found many a shoddy but functional piece of furniture over the years, as well as plenty of things I didn’t realize I needed. In fact, it’s a big enough event that it attracts people from out of town who troll the alleys looking for scrap metal and whatnot – perhaps boosting the local economy in the process.
In 2021, after a year of people doing COVID-19-era renovations and projects, certain parts of town looked like war zones because of the massive piles of (s)crap, (not to minimize actual war zones).
In short, it is a very big deal. I have often wondered about its history and whether other cities have a similar event. At some point years back, I heard a rumor that it might be discontinued – news I didn’t like to hear. Can you use your investigative skills to find out everything that can possibly be known about spring cleanup?
Sincerely, Dr. Gilligan McBrontosaurus
Dear Dr. McBrontosaurus,
First, let me put your mind at rest: The city assured me there are no plans to cancel either the spring or fall cleanups. As you indicate, spring cleanup is for yard waste as well as human waste. Well, by “human waste” I mean one man’s junk that humans produce that might be another man’s treasure.
Fall cleanup is just for yard waste. But it wasn’t always that way. Until 2014, the city used to only pick up junk in the fall, but then switched to spring, which makes sense because there is a lot more yard waste in the fall from leaves, pruning from summer growth, etc., and so there is more room in the spring for the junk.
You can’t put everything out for spring cleanup. Prohibited items include: hazardous waste (including paint, except dried, open cans), chemicals, liquids, batteries and fuel; electronics and appliances (TVs, computers, refrigerators, freezers and air conditioning units); and automotive and construction debris (tires, concrete, bricks, rocks, dirt and commercial construction debris). Someone left a tire in the alley behind our house, and the city put a note on it that it won’t be picked up, which means it’s going to sit there until I have to pay a couple of bucks to have it disposed at a tire store.
And for yard waste during both fall and spring cleanup, no stumps, branches bigger than 8 feet or 8-inch diameter, or leaves in plastic bags – they can be unbagged or in large paper bags you can get at Kroegers, City Market, Home Depot and Walmart.
Plenty of other cities have a spring cleanup, but it’s hard to imagine any place that loves it more than we do.
Email questions and suggestions to [email protected] or mail them to Action Line, The Durango Herald, 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. Today’s Fun Fact: More than 290 million tires are discarded annually in the U.S. Many are burned as fuel in pulp and paper mills, cement kilns, and power plants. Others become “crumb rubber” for construction and playground surfaces or civil engineering applications like road base filler. Or they can be reused to build “earthships,” which are passive-solar houses built into the earth with old tires as a primary building material. You can find them around here up on Florida Mesa or out near Bayfield, or you can see a large colony of them as you drive into Taos, New Mexico. And, of course, old tires can be used to secure the metal roofs of older mobile homes against wind storms.