A waste collector is a person employed by a public or private enterprise to collect and remove refuse (waste) and recyclables from residential, commercial, industrial or other collection site for further processing and disposal. Specialised waste collection vehicles featuring an array of automated functions are often deployed to assist waste collectors in reducing collection and transport time and for protection from exposure. Waste and recycling pickup work is physically demanding and it exposes workers to a number of occupational hazards.
Statistics show waste collection to be one of the most dangerous jobs, at times even more dangerous than police work, but consistently less dangerous than commercial fishing and ranch and farm work. On-the-job hazards include broken glass; medical waste such as syringes; caustic chemicals; falling objects from overloaded containers; diseases that may accompany solid waste; asbestos; dog attacks and pests; inhaling dust, smoke, and fumes; inclement weather, traffic accidents, and odors so foul that they can make one physically sick.
Scavengers and recyclers
In many developing countries, the first people to tackle the waste collection are pickers working in the informal economy, i.e. they may be self-financing through recycling, repairing, and reselling. Examples include the bottley-wallah, recycler of many sorts of materials in India, castes such as the Zabbaleen in Egypt, or tip scavenger groups in Brazil such as documented in the film Hauling.
Many varieties of English have a range of names for waste collectors, from formal job titles for municipal employees, to colloquial and regional terms.
Eugène Poubelle, French official, who ordered in 1884 that all Paris landlords supply their tenants with covered garbage containers. His name became the standard French term for a garbage can (waste bin.)
Andy Abraham - X-Factor contestant
Mike Batt - wombles singer and Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order
Larry Bird - hall of fame basketball player - briefly after dropping out of Indiana University and before enrolling at Indiana State University.
Michael Carroll - UK National Lottery winner (got his job back in 2010 after he went bankrupt)
Barry Horne - animal rights activist
Steve Hutchins - politician
Richard Leiterman - cinematographer
Nathan Rees - politician, former Premier of New South Wales
Neville Southall - international footballer
Georges St-Pierre - mixed martial artist and UFC Welterweight Champion, (worked as a garbage man for 6 months)
Benjamin Pell - a quasi-private investigator known in the British press as "Benji The Binman".
Martin Phillips - Welsh darts player who has made multiple appearances in the BDO World Professional Darts Championship
Peter Steele - late vocalist/bassist of Type O Negative drove garbage trucks and other vehicles for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
Malcolm Webster - convicted murderer in England
Nicodemus "Noddy" Boffin, aka the Golden Dustman, in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, probably based on Henry Dodd, a ploughboy who made his fortune removing London's rubbish.
Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway), a common dustman, My Fair Lady from the stage play, Broadway, 1956; London, 1958; Warner Bros. motion picture, 1964.
Louie Wilson (Scatman Crothers) of Chico and the Man
Carl (Charlie Sheen) and James (Emilio Estevez) from the 1990 film Men at Work
Barney Gorman (Tony Danza) from the 1998 television film The Garbage Picking Field Goal Kicking Philadelphia Phenomenon
Bob and Doug McKenzie, on their 2009 animated series
Sid Phillips, main antagonist in the animated film Toy Story (1995) who grows up to be a garbageman as seen in Toy Story 3 (2010)
Garbageman - From Dilbert
Howard Moon of The Mighty Boosh has worked twice as a Bin man, once prior to the show and lastly in The Strange Tale of the Crack Fox.
Duke "The Dumpster" Droese, character created by professional wrestler Mike Droese
Muckman - From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Wreck-Gar - From Transformers Animated
Roc Emerson, from the Fox television series Roc
Roger Wilco - From the Space Quest computer game series by Sierra Entertainment
The films Blood Feast, Scanners III: The Takeover and Child's Play 3 all feature minor characters being murdered with refuse trucks.
Oliver Frensky - From Arthur (TV series).
Jonathan Thomas Meriweather - A sanitation engineer mistaken for an engineer in Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster, saving the world with magic
