At swap table, Lincolnites can take it or leave it

(Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the Lincoln Journal in 2012 before author Alice Waugh went on to found the Lincoln Squirrel.)

By Alice Waugh

A tackle box with some rusty fishing lures inside. A wooden spice rack. Ski boots. An unopened package of cassette tapes. Bamboo window shades. A child’s bicycle. Toys galore. These were just a few of the things that could be found recently at the Lincoln transfer station’s swap table, where the town’s dedication to recycling can be seen in spades

Malene Coombs gathers up some board games for students at the Boston school where she teaches. (Photo: Alice Waugh)

On Wednesdays and Saturdays, Lincoln residents bring their garbage and recyclable materials to the transfer station (some still call it the dump for short, although trash is no longer buried in the adjacent landfill). There are metal trailers to hold trash, paper and cardboard, glass and plastic, and metal, as well as containers for donated clothing and old TVs.

Many Lincolnites (visitors must have a resident sticker to enter the transfer station) also stop by the swap table to leave things they don’t want and perhaps take home someone else’s discarded item that catches their eye. And sometimes they may happen upon something unexpected—including, once, a Prada handbag discovered by Bernadette Quirk, a Recycling Committee member who helps manage the swap table and answers residents’ recycling questions.

“I saw this little black bag and thought, “Oh, my daughter might like that,'” Quirk said. “I had no idea what it was at first.”

Grace Sweetser checks out a discarded toy that she thought might be fun for the beach. (Photo: Alice Waugh)

Residents sometimes drop off their swap table items in a single pile, so Quirk and her fellow Recycling Committee volunteers, including Sue Stason and Janice Phillipps, sort the items, deciding what should be thrown in the trash, what can be saved and stored in the shed for another day, and what can be donated to Goodwill if no one else wants it.

“We find that when we unpack things and display them, they move much quicker,” Phillipps said.

The committee members volunteer their time to help the bottom line (“the more the town recycles, the more money it saves,” Stason said), but also for the social benefits.

“I get to see all my neighbors and say hi,” Phillipps said. “It’s a very civic activity.”

Other unusual items left at the swap table in the past have included a bag of ammunition pellets that broke open—”it was such a mess,” Quirk said—and even food, which the volunteers throw in the trash right away, along with anything broken or potentially dangerous.

One of the most memorable swap table findings was several old-fashioned enemas. “Someone must have been cleaning out their grandmother’s house,” Quirk said. “We were laughing so hard.”

The volunteers see their mission not just as sorters, but as educators. Sometimes residents don’t know where to recycle something such as brush (the answer: at the Department of Public Works on Lewis Street). Or they don’t realize that dry and laundered textiles of any kind—unmatched socks, single shoes, even moth-eaten blankets—can be recycled in the Red Cross container. Items that can’t reused for their original purpose are ground up for another use, Phillipps said.

One common type of item residents leave at the swap table are things their kids no longer use. Malene Coombs of Page Road was happy to stuff some children’s books and board games into a plastic bag for the children at the Boston public school where she teaches

“My school is one of the most needy,” said Coombs, who takes swap-table items for her fellow teachers and parent coordinators as well as her own students. “This stuff is invaluable.”

“That gladdens my heart, because there’s so much stuff that just gets dumped,” Stason said.

“It’s true what they say—one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” said Quirk.