Bill Janes can tell you with surprising accuracy where your trash was dumped at his landfill the day you accidentally tossed a favorite piece of jewelry. But that doesn’t mean you’ll get it back.

Janes manages one of four area landfills that receive waste from Chicago. The landfill, owned by Republic Services, is 2 miles off I-55 in Pontiac and features two main hills spanning 550 acres, making it one of the largest landmarks (and likely the tallest) in Livingston County.

Six days a week, garbage trucks from Chicago and the suburbs deliver a total of 5,000 tons of trash that are dumped into a section of the landfill measuring 10 to 20 acres. As part of his duties as the landfill’s operations manager, Janes keeps a log that pinpoints where trash lands at any given time.

“I know what part of the hill we’re dumping in every day,” Janes said during a tour of the landfill earlier this month.

Frequently, Janes or one of his colleagues at Republic will get a phone call from someone saying, “‘I threw my jewelry away,’” or worse: a wedding ring.

“And that’s usually a long shot,” said Brian Holcomb, general manager of Republic’s Chicago operations.

The company’s records of where trash is dumped does, however, come in handy when Janes or Holcomb receives a call from a police department or other law enforcement agency.

“Somebody will have put something in the trash that law enforcement is trying to find – maybe it’s records, evidence – and they’ll ask us, ‘The load, it left today. Has it dumped yet?’” Holcomb said. “And we can kind of track back – and if the truck is in line waiting, we’ll pull it off to the side – and sometimes they’ll find what they’re looking for.”

In such cases, police often bring search dogs to help track down missing records or evidence. They also look for location clues in any mail that winds up at the landfill.

“They start sifting through the trash, and they’re looking for addresses,” Janes said. “The last time we had to assist with a search, they were down to a section of trash where they had addresses to the city block where they thought [the trash originated]. That’s how they know they’re getting close.”

Holcomb said there is usually a 50-50 chance that police are able to find what they’re looking for. Sometimes, though, “it’s really like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Janes said.

Standing next to the sprawling pile of trash where trucks are unloading, it seems like a miracle that any missing items, whether jewelry or paper files, are ever recovered.

To read the full story, visit http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2017/06/26/i-lost-my-wedding-ring-and-other-stories-chicago-s-accidental-trash.

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