City trash pickups to target the unusual

Mount Airy’s knuckle boom, or grapple, truck is used to pick up furniture discarded at a home along North Main Street during a past spring cleanup campaign when unusual items are accepted into the city’s garbage stream. It begins this year on April 10.

The time has come once again for city residents to check attics, garages or basements for unwanted items such as old mattresses and appliances, ahead of an annual cleanup campaign that invites the truly unusual. In the past, this has even included the discarding of upright pianos and a cast-iron bathtub during the special two-week period when Mount Airy sanitation personnel will pick up items not normally accepted.

This year it will run during the week of April 10-14 and again the next week from April 17-21, according to an announcement from city Sanitation Supervisor Russell Jarrell. The special service is available for residential properties only, Jarrell stressed. During the two-week citywide spring cleanup only, crews will collect these items in addition to regular garbage:

o Appliances; o Tires, limited to 12 per residence (with or without rims); o Building materials (those generated by homeowners);

o Carpeting of any size; o Large furniture items; o Bicycles and tricycles;

o Loose leaves (which normally are picked up only from Oct.

1 through Dec.

31); o Limbs exceeding 3 inches in diameter (which must be separated from smaller-diameter brush); o Old gas grills (without cylinders).

Items such as old push and riding lawn mowers and exercise equipment also have tended to find their way into the mix that typically amasses hundreds of tons of various discards altogether. During one recent year, for example, 239 mattresses and 296 pieces of upholstered furniture were picked up from homes during the two-week campaign. Residents are asked to place extra items at the curb beside trash carts on their regular collection day.

Jarrell has said that homeowners can assist pickup personnel by neatly stacking building materials at the curb as opposed to piling those up haphazardly, to allow easier handling. Another such request to residents involves not placing items underneath utility lines due to the clearance needed for the grapple truck used to pick up materials, which involves a crane device mounted on the vehicle for handling bulkier objects. Due to environmental regulations, city sanitation personnel cannot collect paint, pesticides, herbicides, solvents or chemicals.

However, those substances are accepted during an annual event at Veterans Memorial Park (typically in the fall), which is spearheaded by the Surry County Center of N.C. Cooperative Extension, Surry County Public Works and the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Tom Joyce may be reached at 336-415-4693 or on Twitter @Me_Reporter.