"COMMUNITY PROBLEM" 1950s TRASH COLLECTION & WASTE MANAGEMENT VINTAGE FILM by CATERPILLAR INC. 52404

[@Garwood900]

Wow, this film takes me back. I grew up in this era, and remember open / burning dumps near my town. A friends father owned a small independent waste hauling company, and I worked summers (as a kid mind you) hangin' on the back of packers & slinging trash 5 days a week. The Landfill we dumped at was actually a mined out gravel & sand pit for a local concrete Co. No such thing as landfill liners back then, and recycling wasn't heard of in my area until the mid 1980's. I remember dumping our trucks into pools of standing water @ the bottom of the pit, that was quite large (approx. 1 mile long by ½ mile wide). As River Huntingdon mentioned below, they would take in most anything. I saw whole cars crushed, tires, appliances etc. Even drums of chemical and industrial waste were dumped in and compacted. They were using hydraulic landfill compactors & large bulldozers on this site in the late 60's & 70's when I was in the business. But they still had some old cable drag line excavators and a old dozer as a back up unit if something broke down. It was a fascinating place to go twice a day to dump, and see all the action of over 100 trucks dumping each day.

[@trashyraccoon2615]

IM so jealous! I would have basically lived there. I hate how controlled landfills are now. No fun

[@riverhuntingdon6659]

We had a "Controlled Tip" where I grew up in 70's England. ANYTHING went in it, car bodies, old fridges and appliances, planned obsolecense in action. Even the contents of local cesspools were dumped there. Then the whole lot was set on fire, asbestos fibres everywhere. It's still astonishing what I find on the bins. TWO LED TV sets, one needed a simple repair, other one worked. DVD HDD recorders, old record players, vintage boomboxes and stereos, speakers, appliances. All are usually easy to fix, but the average person has no idea HOW to fix it, and there's nowhere to take them for repair that won't try to sell you a new one. So it's all replaced by garbage chinapride so-called engineering. I do repairs for people, just recently fixed a 1970 ITT TV set. All it was was a blown 30 - ohm speaker. an easy one LOL !

[@SomeGuy-dq8pn]

Who's here because of Penguinz0?

[@piatpotatopeon8305]

Penguinz0 did a video about landfills?

[@davidduffy9806]

Primary sources such as this are invaluable.

[@Krishell]

Thanks!

[@PeriscopeFilm]

Thanks very, very much. Donations like this make it possible for us to save more rare and endangered films! Love our channel? Get the inside scoop on Periscope Film! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm

[@shadofax96]

It's quite stunning to see those old cable operated tractors and equipment in action. It also interesting to keep in perspective what a problem trash really is. Today we take for granted the technology utilized to deal with trash. Open pit dumps, incinerators and actually feeding hogs trash... Wow...

[@stevenmetzger3385]

@4:25 that is a Hydraulic Dozer Blade, not Cable

[@stevenmetzger3385]

@5:22 that is a Cable Dozer Blade

[@shadofax96]

You are correct, the excavators that run on cables really blow my mind, since we obviously have come a LONG way since cable operated anything when it comes to construction/earthmoving equipment.

[@stevenmetzger3385]

+shadofax96 Yes, the technological advancement is amazing, in power, hydraulics/hydrostatics, & electronics. It is also quite amazing what was accomplished by the prior, "primitive" mechanical designs. The many types of equipment that were Steam powered w/cables, & Horse powered w/manually (human) operated controls, are mainly unknown to most people.

[@shadofax96]

Watching what it took to excavate the Panama Canal using what was available at the time was simply stunning. It's hard to imagine what people were able to do with such primitive equipment. But where there is a will, there is a way.

[@joseph2149]

I was genuinely curious how they got rid of trash before plastic trash bags were invented, I couldn't figure it out until I saw this! I had no idea they didn't even use trash bags! It's crazy how far garbage technology has come

[@johnwoa]

People DID use bags to put their household garbage in. Back in the 1950's and 60's, plastic trash bags had not been invented yet, so people used the brown paper grocery bags that everyone got from the supermarkets. The garbage-filled paper grocery bags were then placed in metal garbage cans that were widely used back then and were placed at the curb for collection. Wet garbage, such as vegetable and fruit skins, coffee grounds, meat scraps, etc... were wrapped up in sheets of newspaper and also put in the metal garbage can. As for wrapping up wet garbage in sheets of newspaper, back in those days, everyone received the daily newspaper.

[@kris78787]

Now the trash is all plastic which doesnt decompose for 500 years

[@renmuffett]

Men used to lift the cans to dump. Now they pull out the plastic bags!

[@jeffreywoods4040]

It’s amazing how much of the visible trash was paper! Totally different mix now…

[@catmandoo2148]

There aint nothin worse than workin on a piece of equipment from the landfill :~x

[@JohnDoe-sc7vz]

Back then people used porches to sit not pile a ton of trash on it.

[@josephheston9238]

Those poor hogs, not realizing they are being made into cannibals.

[@genli5603]

Hogs will eat piglets belonging to other sows. They aren't bothered by cannibalism.

[@jackking5567]

Dozer McDozeface saves the day.

[@albertpatterson3675]

I guess technology has solved part of the problem. Sweden has to import garbage from England to keep their recycling plants operating at capacity. They get electricity from burning garbage. But, that's Sweden.

[@genli5603]

Incineration isn't recycling, no matter what Sweden calls it.

[@PizzaRollz1]

@@genli5603 If what you're burning is contributing to generating electricity, and you are doing so in a manner as clean as possible, well, even without the second bit, technically, you are recycling.

[@kushalgokhale9114]

I guess a major part of the definition of recycling is using the waste again, in some form, without causing any detriment. If Sweden is burning the waste and using the electricity generated, then part of it only can be called recycling if the process is causing air pollution. Btw, what do you mean by 'as clean as possible ' ?

[@Tiqerboy]

Clearly a sales pitch by Caterpillar so they can sell the heavy equipment required for landfill operation. No mention of recycling anywhere in the film. Even by the late 1950s it was becoming increasingly necessary to reduce landfill volume.

[@Michaelnkdhkgdhuudz]

Tiqerboy it was filmed and produced by Cat...

[@photographicfunwithrainerq5041]

I wonder if the same landfills are still used today? Or have they been developed on?

[@tombax1653]

Yet another example of how your Caterpillar track type tractor will solve all your problems. Can you really afford not to have one?

[@nw9120]

Nice

[@horehoundbasedcandy8736]

Back when a trench was feasible, now there’s too many people

[@bogomdan21]

oh P

[@tjfreak]

One of the things with the metal cans back then is they would toss em back up into your yard & crash bang ! & dents & complaints then the plastic cans came out..if you bitched they knew who you were.After I could walk & could leave the yard in the late 60's I was following our truck down the street,as terrified as i was of that scary thing(and the street cleaner) I was drawn to to it & then it became further & further on foot & my bike as I got older. eventually "chuck" would let me toss stuff in & activate the levers once in a while..then I started to realize the stuff people threw away... & I was a "garbage picker"

[@johnwoa]

I have known all my life that a metal garbage can is not a "garbage can" unless it had a dent in it! I had a friend back in 1972 who, when he purchased a new "metal" garbage can, he would stand out in his yard with his neighbors watching and he would take a long iron rod, place the can on its side and give it a good hard whack. He said that he was "baptizing" his garbage can and placing the first dent on it before the garbage collectors got hold of it on collection day. This is a true story!