This Book is Garbage!

By Colin McGregor

“There are currently 347 reservations for this book at the library.”

When I saw that email on my computer screen, I asked myself: “What sort of book would stir up that much interest in Quebec?” The reply: Ordures! Journal d’un vidangeur (Garbage! Diary of a Trash Collector). With its cardboard cover, this book by garbage collector Simon Paré-Poupart is short and to the point.  

“I spend my days in the middle of garbage. For 20 years, I’ve disposed of close to 70,000 tons of trash, and this has inevitably fashioned who I am” he tells us. This book is a love letter, because the author loves his calling.

Paré-Poupart quotes sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who, in Lost Lives, wrote that all forms of social order implies trash: “There is always a border between the clean and the dirty, the pure and the impure.” A world like ours, obsessed with progress, leaves behind wasted humans: rejects, useless existences.

A private-public amalgam manages waste disposal in Quebec. The author explains to us the complex labyrinth of private contractors and public sector jurisdictions that make sure that once a week our sidewalks are cleared of refuse (every two weeks in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve). He likes the “Far West” nature of the garbage collection world: “I like finding myself on the thin line that separates the clean and the unclean.”

Criminality, addiction, alcoholism, violence, stories of sleeping while standing: all this is present in this day/night world. And certainly, there is athleticism. Except for those who drive the truck, this is a job for athletes. Watching garbage collectors dance and run while gathering heavy loads and flinging them one after another into the backs of trucks, it is obvious that this is no place for the lazy or the out-of-shape.

“This performance,” writes Paré-Poupart, “gives one a sense of vitality and of indefinable accomplishment. This dizzying, exhausting movement, this intoxicating pressure, are collectively a grace that frees you from the burdens of existence. We fear it and we chase after it. Ceaselessly.”

The author studied sociology and international administration at university, and works as a social worker. This goes some way to explaining why this marvellous French language book is so pertinent and well written. But at age 38, he still runs behind garage trucks part-time. A garbage man with a master’s degree.

He says there are two billion tons of solid waste on Earth, and references the pitiful 10% of plastics we toss into our recycling bins that are truly recycled here in Quebec. The price for clean cities and suburbs is paid by Mother Nature. Paré-Poupart has some harsh things to say about how recycling centres are run.

This book is in line with other revealing works on the world and professions that we rarely think about. It is especially reminiscent of Anthony Bourdain’s classic Kitchen Confidential. Published in 2000, this best-seller on the behind-the-scenes of New York restaurants launched its author on a brilliant broadcasting career until his suicide in 2018.  

My only criticism of this examination of the backstage of garbage collecting: at 138 pages, it is way too short. Let’s hope it’s not the last thing we read from Simon Paré-Poupart’s pen.

Ordures ! Journal d’un vidangeur by Simon Paré-Poupart, Lux Éditeur, October 2024, 138 pages.