Dianna Amidon, affectionately known as ‘Dirty Di,’ is a real life superhero.

Amidon is in charge of special projects at Syracuse Haulers Waste Removal Inc., a full-line refuse company. In short, she manages garbage pickup, among other things. She came to speak to my solid waste management class last week. Trash pickup has never been the sexiest part of resource management, but the way Amidon tells the story kept us engaged.

Launching immediately into her talk without telling us her name, she gave the disclaimer that she ‘was not cynical, just frustrated.’ She delineated the differences between municipal contracts, through which town or city pays the garbage company a flat rate per resident for collection, and subscriptions, which allow individual residents to choose their garbage collection company and pay per quarter, in language more colorful than my professor was entirely comfortable with.

In a big meeting with other leaders in the waste management industry, environmental regulators and a politician accompanied by his secretary she deemed to be a ‘slam piece,’ everyone proposed impractical strategies for minimizing landfill waste and increasing recycling rates. The suggestions revealed a real lack of knowledge about the daily operations of garbage pickup.

She dared to ask when the last time any of them had been on a garbage truck and every jaw dropped. ‘You would think I had just asked if they were having sex with their sister!’ she exclaimed. Their subsequent ride in the truck was enlightening, of course.

She placed an emphasis on the financial sustainability necessary to make such an operation work and quickly separated herself from ‘granola-eating hippies.’ There is a lot cash to be made in certain sectors of recycling and scrap metal. She talked about the cost breakdown of a compacting truck in round numbers with a familiarity that attested to how knowledgeable she was about her operation.

Amidon has carefully considered every part of the business, from truck maintenance to background checks on her drivers. A competing company had unwittingly hired two convicted pedophiles and offered the option to their subscribers for garbage to be picked up in the garage, not at the curb. These men had begun talking with two little girls playing in a screened-in porch during summer break. Fortunately, they were fired before any incidents occurred, much to the relief of the girls’ mom — who just happened to be a stripper, Amidon said.

As her talk progressed, at any given moment we felt like she was revealing secrets that we weren’t supposed to know about the garbage world. Her complete disregard for confidentiality and willingness to tell it like it is made us love her more. She turned waste management into a seedy drama with herself as the heroine.

Whether she knows it or not, Amidon is exactly what environmentalism needs more of — fabulous storytellers. She made garbage scintillating and was not bogged down with the nobleness of saving the planet. She just got sh*t done.

Leanna Mulvihill is a senior forest engineering major and environmental writing and rhetoric minor. Her column appears every Tuesday. She can be reached at lpmulvih@syr.edu.

Published on October 9, 2011 at 12:00 pm