For 18 years, Paul Campbell has been lugging 300-pound bins filled with watermelon rinds, coconut shells and other compost onto a truck in the dead of the night. As a sanitation worker, he sees a part of New York that few ever get the chance to glimpse: its vast food waste.
While the city sleeps, Mr. Campbell drives around picking up compost — onion skins and orange peels, yes, but also fully intact fruits and vegetables — from restaurants and markets. As the sun rises, he deposits his haul at a warehouse, to be eventually turned into biogas for New York and New Jersey.
The job requires a willingness to drive long hours, a tolerance for foul odors and an appreciation for spending time alone in a truck. (What does he like most about dealing in trash? “It don’t talk back to you,” he said.) And because his work is nocturnal, most people never even see him doing it. But they can thank workers like Mr. Campbell for all those spent grains from breweries and discarded lettuce leaves from fast-food chains that will bypass the landfill to become renewable energy.
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