Slasher Nation

Published October 9, 2007

By Julia Taddonio

There’s a certain song to Burlington in the morning. If you live downtown you’ve surely heard the distinct hum of aluminum clattering against glass. This chorus of cans and bottles is not the sound of garbage trucks, ladies and gentlemen…it’s the anthem of the Slashers.

Slashers are those who pick through recycling bins and garbage bags for items to bring to the Redemption Center. The term Slashers was coined by my trash removal company (I needn’t mention names) last summer, because often times these people cut through regular trash bags that are marooned on the edge of the sidewalk in search of bottles and cans. However, they should know better because everyone in Vermont recycles, right?

This can end in a terrible mess of garbage in the streets, on sidewalks, and on front lawns which at the end of the day is littering the beautiful city of Burlington, and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?

I have nothing against Slashers. In fact they can take all of my recycling if need be, but I’ve been getting a little sleep deprived, as of late, from waking up long before my alarm to the hair-raising, goose bump- inducing sound of “pop, clang, shatter, pop, crash,” only to peer out my window and see my front lawn strewn about with rubbish. When I finlly rub my sleepy eyes and look to the horizon I always see the same sight-a person pushing a squeaky shopping cart down the sidewalk, leaving a thin trail of dark syrupy garbage juice behind him. Then I have to go outside and pick up a week’s worth of refuse with my bare hands (and yeah I know I could put on gloves but who has time for rubber gloves?!). If you haven’t already experienced this, let me tell you, my friends, this is not the ideal way to start a nice autumn day, But this is in no way a seasonal issue; it happens year round! No one realizes it in the winter because the snow covers up the trash until Mud Season (yes, here in Burlington it gets the official capitalization) when it’s revealed after months and months of winter cold.

After living downtown for quite a while, I’ve also noticed that Slashers stick to certain areas of town, kind of like
hookers. I make this comparison not to demean their way of life or reduce them to the level of prostitution for the comparison is only in the sense of locality. It is a known fact that when women work this profession, they patrol certain streets, they have their own “corner,” and they are very territorial about their work-space. Other girls are not permitted to work in their “spot,” it’s like the unwritten laws of hustling or something. I don’t know if there are unwritten laws of slashing, but Slashers do tend to “work” only certain streets. I’m confident that the same few Slashers are collecting my recyclables, just as I’m almost certain a different handful of them are tapping into my friends’ bins on the other side of town. The Slashers on my street are awfully messy, and they give us college kids a bad rep because the town probably thinks it’s we who scatter our crap all over the place (and if you do, you know who are and shame on you).

There doesn’t seem to be too much we can do to avoid this unsolicited wake up call, except this: make the Slashers’ job easier and always sort your trash. This might minimize actual slashing of non-recyclable trash bags.

Also, if you see your friendly neighborhood Slasher, say “Hello,” because they are mostly very nice people just trying to collect some extra change, and we all know very well that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

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