Moncton — It was only supposed to be an April Fool’s joke. A prank. But due to a breakdown in communication, the residents of Moncton have been hapless victims of a hoax for years, and it’s all a load of garbage.
The City of Moncton began a trash-sorting program several years ago with the goal of properly channelling different sorts of trash into different areas of the landfill site for processing. The plan seemed to be accepted by residents, who believed that they were doing something to clean up the city and help the planet.
Documents obtained by The Manatee reveal that the entire garbage-sorting scheme was a prank thought up by members of the city’s maintenance staff over lunch. A letter was drafted, describing a mind-boggling recycling plan with a set of rules that bordered on the ridiculous, but that was guaranteed to “ensure purer waste streams with higher market value than by other collection methods” and faxed to the mayor’s office on April 1.
“Before we knew what happened, council approved the plan, and new garbage trucks were rolling out,” crew boss Marc Theriault stated. “Green, blue, wet, dry — we just made that up. In reality, we don’t sort a single thing. As soon as it goes in the garbage truck, it’s all compacted into one big pile of crap that we dump in a deep hole in the woods.”
The good people of Moncton are not impressed with being trashed by this hoax, but the joke may be on them; the city has decided to continue the recycling plan concocted April 1, pledging more resources in 2016 to further purify its waste streams.