The Life Cycle of Boston's Abandoned Furniture

A chorus of backup beeps and rumbling moving trucks is the Boston soundtrack in the first week of September, and picking your way around discarded shelves and office chairs littering the sidewalk is de rigueur. As one young woman hiking up Beacon Hill grumbled into her cell phone Wednesday, "It looks like IKEA just exploded on the street."

But hey! Ugly though it might be, that beat-up couch on your corner could turn into much more than the sum of its busted-up stitches and pulled-apart stuffing. Here's how that happens.

But first, meet the guy who knows.

Rob DeRosa is Superintendent of Waste Reduction for the City of Boston's Public Works Department. His job is to make sure residential curbside trash and recycling collection goes off without a hitch, and this week — "Allston Christmas" — it gets kicked up many, many notches.

Downtown, DeRosa told Patch, Public Works sees a roughly 50 percent increase in the volume of curbside furniture and other trash. In The Allston-Brighton area, it's not unusual to see that volume go up 100 percent.

Busy, yes, but DeRosa said Waste Reduction comes prepared.

"It's basically the rite of passage," he said. "We'll have recycling trucks out there; we'll have trash trucks out there; we'll stay ahead of it."

As the big day arrives and regular trash day comes due, his crews and city-contracted collectors out of Revere and Hyde Park are patrolling the streets. By the time discarded furniture gets abandoned on the corner, it becomes his department's responsibility, and they have a job to do.

"Our basic function is to open up the sidewalk and make safe passage," DeRosa said, adding, "Boston sidewalks are a challenge on a good day."

So where to, then?

Once crews pick up that discarded office chair or broken shelf, it's taken to a transfer station in Roxbury. From there, DeRosa said, the majority will go to a waste-to-energy plant, either Wheelabrator in Saugus or Covanta, which has facilities in Pittsfield, Haverhill, Springfield, and Rochester.

Here's a quick video explainer for those curious how that process goes, courtesy of a non-local Covanta plant:

DeRosa found his way to superintendent by working, as he said, "the full gamut of the waste industry." That includes pickup from the backs of garbage trucks, landfills and the private sector. As such, he knows the challenges facing the guys working the trucks — "a tough, tough and thankless job" — and he knows the kinds of things they see curbside on weeks like this.

"You see a lot of stuff, unfortunately," he said. "You drive around today and you just see a lot of stuff; it's really wasteful."

When he worked in landfills, DeRosa says his favorite finds (and you get a strong hint of sarcasm on "favorite") were hand-woven, Oriental rugs — likely thrown out from one of Boston's more affluent suburbs, if he had to guess.

What he wishes this week of off-loading would actually entail is a little planning ahead by the students and other renters moving out. A simple call to a non-profit or trip to Goodwill would make a difference, he said. If not them, the city steps in.

For 2016, there's little left to be done on the waste reduction front, but there's always next Christmas.

Read more from Patch:

• Check the Height of Your Rental Truck, And Other Move-In Day Guidelines
• Heat Map Shows Which Streets Will See Most Disruption with Fall Move-In

Photo by Patch reporter Alison Bauter