No Trash Talking at This Museum to the Clean Team

"When you think about the history of the city, the key to growth and well-being is effective garbage removal," Nagle says. "You can't have a sparkling city without it."

Nagle spent more than a year working with New York sanitation teams, sometimes hauling bags, sometimes driving garbage trucks. She ended up with a huge amount of material for a forthcoming book, "Picking Up," and a somewhat smaller collection of what is known as "mongo." It's a sanitation crew term for something plucked out of the trash for reuse.

Technically it's prohibited, but apparently it will get you in trouble only if a supervisor has it out for you and can't nail you for something else. Otherwise, nobody seems to mind.

"I would guess that about half of the guys mongo," Nagle says.

A mongo sampler is part of "Loaded Out," including luggage, an electric fan, gloves, a framed photo of an old car, a vinyl record of a Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand duet. Typically, stuff like this gets repurposed in a variety of ways.

"Some sanitation workers eBay their mongo, or they sell it in a yard sale," Nagle says. "One guy gave it to his church. Another guy found this really beautiful white cashmere scarf and he took it to the dry cleaner and gave it to his wife on Christmas. I don't know if he ever told her it was mongo."

Let's hope not.

Mongo is just one of the benefits of sanitation work. The pay is pretty good, too. Most sanitation workers are earning $56,000 a year five years into the job, and you can retire after 20 years of service, with about half your salary for the rest of your life. Take a bow, Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association, part of the Teamsters.

"I had to go into a lottery just to take the exam," says Robert Attina, a supervisor. "Thousands of people apply. I think there were 200 people in the last class."

On the downside, the work is dangerous. Nagle swears she has stats proving that New York City sanitation workers die more often on the job than New York City cops. Getting hit by a car is one of the biggest hazards.

If she gets her way, "Loaded Out" will be just the beginning -- or rather, step number two, since this is the second iteration of the exhibit, which first opened in a Sanitation Department building in Chelsea late last year. Nagle is planning a full-scale, permanent museum at a site that she would rather not identify. She'll start building just as soon as she persuades the city and private donors to cough up the many millions of dollars needed for construction.

The more you contemplate life without sanitation workers, the more you think: Pay the lady.