Judy Kujawa is wearing clean jeans, a white short-sleeved Oxford shirt emblazoned with the Pinellas County logo and well-worn sneakers. She's a Solid Waste Supervisor I. Her office is a dump: Bridgeway Acres, to be exact.
The Pinellas County Utilities Department of Solid Waste Operations is a 705-acre facility, home to a recycling drop-off center (including a household electronics and chemical collection center, or HEC3), a waste-to-energy plant (a ginormous incinerator that burns garbage into energy and sells it to Progress Energy), and a landfill that is easily the highest point in the county (so high that some Pinellas employees have gone there to view launches of the space shuttle).
And what's the first question Kujawa gets from new acquaintances? You guessed it: "What about the smell?"
"It hardly smells around here," she responds. Sitting inside her truck on top of the landfill one day recently, Kujawa explains that garbage is never left exposed; each day it's compacted and then covered up with ash, or ag, from incinerated garbage. Vultures mill about and seagulls dive-bomb garbage as the bulldozers slowly push the ag to the top of each fresh pile. The air does smell vaguely fishy, but not even half as bad as Bayshore on a mildly warm day.
Kujawa, 47, is a single grandmother of three. She works four 10-hour days, her schedule changing week to week. She's been with the county for 17 years and likes the security and benefits that come with a county position. Seven years ago she came to solid waste by choice, after waiting for a position to open up. As demand for recycling rose, more jobs were created. She landed one of them, as coordinator of recycling for electronics and chemicals.
"It's a good place to work, good people. It's a job you can feel good about." Kujawa, a graduate of Clearwater High, says most of the public appreciates not having to throw recyclables in the trash. "It's their opportunity to do the right thing."
After garbage trucks fill up in various Pinellas County neighborhoods, they head to this facility to drop their load in a hangar-like building with six huge "garage" doors. The green garbage trucks back into an available bay, dump their contents and leave again. Three large cranes resembling claws in a carnival machine grab up to six tons at a time. They fluff the garbage, then drop it into the incinerator. Soda cans or milk cartons thrown into trash cans instead of recycle bins end up here, to be burned with the rest of the garbage.
Though anything that can be burned will be, Judy urges: "We still want you to recycle. We don't want to burn plastic. What your contractor doesn't pick up can be brought here."
Depending. When asked if the #6 plastic cup in her cup holder can be recycled, she says this facility only collects 1's and 2's. She doesn't know where a #6 plastic cup can go to be recycled, but if "it's Wisconsin, it wouldn't be worth it." Counties and cities have a similar problem with Styrofoam; no facility around here recycles it. Her solution: "Stop making it!"
As a resident of Pinellas Park (unlike a resident of, say, St. Petersburg), Judy enjoys the ease of curbside pickup for glass and cans, plastic and newspapers. And as a Bridgeway Acres supervisor, she gets an added benefit: When it comes to items that have to be dropped off at the recycling center — for instance, cardboard and mixed paper (phone books, computer paper) — all she has to do is bring them with her to work. But all residents of Pinellas County can drop off these items during business hours. The county also partners with Home Depot, which has many recycling events during the year in its store parking lots.
Another perk of Judy's job: She gets first dibs on good stuff in the "swap shop," where chemicals still in usable condition are stored — anything from dish detergent to Miracle Gro to all types of latex paint, all of which movers refuse to transport when people move. Judy, who's fixing up her home, has happily scored name-brand paints by the likes of Behr and Ralph Lauren.
Yard waste at Bridgeway Acres becomes a small, impenetrable dead forest waiting to be mulched. The mulch is put into rows hundreds of yards long and reaching heights and widths of over 15 feet. The piles can reach 160 degrees as they decompose and have to be turned every couple of weeks. It's free to the public — anyone with a bag or tarp. Judy, an avid gardener, uses it to line her flower beds. A fan of the expensive red cedar mulch, she can lay just a thin superficial layer on top for color.
Judy smiles when asked about her safety here. "It's less hazardous here than under your grandmother's sink. At someone's garage or house, all chemicals are stored on the same shelf." Leaks and non-compatible chemicals like ammonia and bleach equal toxic fumes. "It's a bomb waiting to go off. Get rid of all the stuff you're not using. And keep an eye on the things you do use. Plastic bottles can crack."
For each Curiouser profile, I ask the subject to tell me whose life he or she is curious about; the answer determines the person I'll be talking to next. Judy is curious about the life of a daycare worker; in the next Curiouser, I find out.
This article appears in May 16-22, 2007.