Venice is a normal city BUT

You have to remember Venice sits on a series of Islands and the logistics of keeping it normal, functioning, and afloat (no pun intended) are tremendous. Goods (food, lumber, sheet rock, wine, EVERYTHING comes in by train, overland trucks, or cargo boat. Along the edges of the main island in the industrial area, workers break large loads into smaller sizes, smaller portions get moved to a break down point where they are sub divided into hand truck manageable bundles and then moved by a person to the last destination. THE PROCESS IS LABOR INTENSIVE AND CONTRIBUTES IN LARGE MEASURE THE COST OF EVERYTHING. The neighborhood supermarket, two blocks fron my B and B, the RESIDENZIA RIVERIA received its food by an 18-wheeler very early in the morning. A major difference, however. The truck was driven onto a specially designed liter, so that that the transport boat could back into the causeway in front of the supermarket, open the doors of the truck, and special forklifts in and outside the truck unloaded specially designed pallets and moved them into the store through a door. Of course, I left the camera in the room.

Not so with the garbage. My camera was ready early in the morning when a funny looking green lighter pulled into a canal outlet going to the sea. The workboat was low in the water with a familiar looking contraption riding in the boat. WALLA, IT WAS A GARBAGE TRUCK tucked into a garbage collection boat. But wait, something was different. The top of the truck had hatches in it and the boat driver was sitting in a small control cab for a crane. Garbage collection is the reverse of supplying the island. Householders put one day’s garbage into small supermarket bags and leave them out side the door. The Commune of Venice (city) collects them in medium kitchen sized trash bags, which they stuff all into clear lawn/leaf capacity plastic bags. Not to little, not too big but easily handled by one person. The neighborhood garbage collections wind up in rolling carts, pushed to the side of a canal to meet their fate with the garbage boat.

The boat arrives, a section of the top pops open, the crane swings over a rolling cart and picks it up. It swings back over the open truck section, drops the cart on to bars which open springs on the cart bottom, the bottom drops and you hear the sound of bottles and cans as it all CRASHES to the bottom of the garbage truck. The compactor does its WHIRR, CRONCH, CRUNCH and the process starts over again with another cart.

Garbage disposal isn’t supposed to be this complicated, but then again, most of us do not live on the Island of Venice.