![]() One man, who collects the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, turned up one day to find eight volumes there. Collectors seeking out-of-print ``gems'' are there as well. Some treat it as a library - taking a book, reading it, and then returning it. It's another popular stopping-off spot for residents. When a local buyer of Wellesley's scrap paper declared that books were a contaminant because of the glue and bindings they contained, the Department of Public Works made space for a book exchange as well. It, too, was returned to a startled owner. ![]() On another occasion a costly watch was discovered in a piece of furniture. ``We've had just about everything left here including autos,'' Barry says, and on one occasion, ``a canopied bed!'' He says airplanes are the ``lone exception.'' It was in this section that the negotiable bonds were discovered.īarry explains: ``If an item isn't picked up after a few days, we examine it to see if it's worth keeping - or junking.'' In inspecting these particular drawers, he found the bonds. So many reusable toys are left off that one father likened visiting the dump to ``going to Child World without having to pay.'' But it could be anything from dimensional lumber taken from a demolished shed to a lawn mower that needs only a new spark plug to get it going again. Should a Wellesley resident ever run for president, many feel there's a better-than-even chance that he or she would announce at the dump.Ī key component in the Wellesley recycling program is the ``take it or leave it'' section, where residents drop off any unwanted item that someone else might find useful - a portable typewriter, for example, that someone no longer needs after mastering the new word processor. Would-be selectmen campaign there at election time. ![]() Some 3,000 cars move in and out of the center on an average Saturday, a fact not lost on Girl Scouts, come cookie-selling time. At least one going-away party has been held there for a departing resident, because the dump ``epitomizes Wellesley'' as much as anything. Townsfolk regularly bring visitors on a tour of the place. ``We've seen deer, fox, raccoons, skunk, a red-tailed hawk, geese, and pheasants, even a killdeer,'' says Barry. It's also something of a haven for wildlife. Lady-slippers bloom in season, and people gather mushrooms and dandelion greens in the spring. The surrounding area is landscaped and parklike. What these visitors find is something quite remarkable for a solid-waste treatment operation. In the words of Barbara Mudd, director of a recycling group from nearby Concord, Mass.: ``It's the prototype of what we are trying to become.''Īs landfill options diminish and America's solid-waste crisis grows, Wellesley's effective program has drawn increasing numbers of visitors from around the country, along with overseas contingents from Britain, Israel, Argentina, and Japan. The town was ahead of the times, a fact that enabled it to become a model that many now follow. When landfill was the preferred, if not the only, way to treat solid waste in this country, Wellesley converted the site around its defunct incinerator into a ``Municipal Recycling and Disposal Facility'' - its official title. Wellesley, a wealthy town of largely college-educated professionals on the outskirts of Boston, has been recycling since 1971. If, in fact, ``the dump'' had been only the landfill the term implies, the bonds would have been buried under tons of other waste and capped with soil long before their loss was noticed. Barry tells the tale to illustrate some of the unexpected bonuses that disciplined recycling has for this community. She had inadvertently thrown away $8,700 of negotiable bonds. The woman who answered the door was horrified when shown the contents. He drove across town to deliver a set of small desktop drawers to an address he'd found inside. Two years ago George Barry, manager of this town's ``dump,'' left work early.
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