Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Alex Cabrero Reporting It is one of the busiest shopping weeks of the year, but today has nothing on garbage pick-up. All that wrapping paper and all those boxes usually end up in one spot: the trash.
For everything Santa dropped off at your house, guys like Trace Sondrop have to pick up.
Trace Sondrop, Salt Lake County Public Works: "It's a lot of garbage."
He doesn't get a reindeer or a sled or anything like that. All he needs is a big old garbage truck, collecting all that wrapping paper which yesterday seemed so important.
Trace Sondrop: "The garbage is light in weight but there's a lot of it."
He's not kidding. The week after Christmas always has garbage cans piled higher than the North Pole.
Trace Sondrop: "There's some pretty tough looking ones. If you drive around through here, you'll see some that are pretty loaded up."
When Christmas falls on a Monday everything is backed up a day, leaving even more garbage and less time to pick it up.
John Pentico, supervisor Salt Lake County Public Works: "You know, that just compounds the fun that we have."
John Pentico is in charge of making sure all your garbage gets picked up on time. This time of year he knows is tricky.
John Pentico: "We do the best we can to get it done, and hopefully, we'll do it."
The thing about trash is, you'd notice real quick if the garbageman didn't come to your house.
Trace Sondrop: "They're just wanting to get rid of their trash."
Just don't over stuff it. Doing so can cause garbage to fall to the ground and not into the truck.
Trace Sondrop: "It takes a lot longer if you're getting out every 3rd or 4th can and picking up a mess."
After all, they're not Santa.
Garbage collection is backed up one day. It'll be the same next week because of New Year's. So if your garbage day is normally on a Thursday, it'll be picked up on Friday.
