Island Profile: Making a name cleaning up the Island

Dan Binder knows for a fact that any number of people are confused about what garbage services are available here on the Island. How does he know? Because he routinely bumps into folks, “You know, at the IGA or anywhere and they say, ‘Didn’t I see you driving that garbage truck, what’s that all about?’”

Well, here’s the straight story. There are two garbage services here on the Island. One is named Shelter Island Refuse and the other is Shelter Island Sanitation. Shelter Island Refuse is based in Mattituck, a division of East End Ecology which also owns Mattituck Sanitation. That company bought Fred Ogar’s business when he retired. Because the original name was kept, many people are not even aware that the business changed hands.

Shelter Island Sanitation is Dan Binder’s company, completely separate, independent and Island-owned.  Dan is seriously considering changing the company’s name, hoping to eliminate the source of confusion. “I’m not exactly sure what it’s going to be, I think I need to stop the ‘Shelter Island’ part of the name. Maybe either my name or just Dan’s or something like that, something totally different, to eliminate the confusion.”

At the time that Mr. Ogar’s business was sold, about 10 years ago, “I was working for my brother at the pool company” — Darrin Binder of Binder Pools. Dan was unable to convince Darrin that the family should buy the refuse company.

“The pool business was booming and we were really so busy we didn’t need any more things to do,” Dan said. A few years later, he still wanted into the business. “So then I decided to start from nothing.” When asked, a few business people said they would contract with him. “So I said ‘What the hell, I’m going to do this.’”

And he has. “Off I went and found myself a garbage truck. My wife wasn’t too thrilled about it at the time but I did it anyway. It’s working quite well actually, each year we grow a little bit more, mainly through word of mouth, that’s the way it is on Shelter Island.

“You just have to get out there and spread the word and so each year I pick up a few more houses and it’s growing, it’s slow but it’s growing.” Recently, he’s added dumpsters, making them available for demolition or renovation  work, expanding with a second truck and different size boxes. When he first started out on his own, he did “a little carpentry on the side,” until the company grew, “But now,  it’s mostly garbage.”

Dan moved here with his family in 1966 when he was in second grade, graduated from the Shelter Island High School in 1977 and went to Campbell College, a small Baptist school in North Carolina for a year, thinking he wanted to go somewhere warm. “What a different world this was. Two religion classes every day, that was pretty strange and all that fried chicken and grits.” He returned to the Island, worked for 19 years on the North Ferry, and eventually joined his brother Darrin in the pool business.

Commenting on the last 10 years on Shelter Island: “Change is slow, but in the right direction. There’s really been a huge change, a definite big effect from Manhattan-type people. Most of it is good, I really don’t see a big problem with more houses going up. I know many people are totally against the big houses, but I think it’s good because they employ a lot of people.

“A lot of my customers are summer people … they’ve got the guy that mows their lawn, the people that clean their house, I get the garbage and on and on. A lot of people come for service, so they’re spending a lot of money on the Island and I think that’s a good thing.

Dan’s wife, Debra VonBrook-Binder grew up in Oakdale, on the south shore of Long Island. She went to Suffolk Community College and then on to Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City for interior design.

She came to Shelter Island to do interior design for Pam Jackson and worked with her company for a number of years. She’s now an agent with Daniel Gale Sotheby’s.

Married 13 years, the couple have two children, Caitlin, 10 and Henry, 8, and both children are in school here. Dan has an older daughter, Alexandra, a college student and local ballroom dancing teacher, from a previous marriage.

Between work and regular involvement in the Shelter Island community — at the school, as scout leaders, at the Presbyterian Church, and in organizing an Island-wide Earth Day Cleanup each spring — it can be very busy at the Binder house.

The Earth Day Cleanup was Dan’s brain child and started four years ago. “We started with just some Scouts and kids from the school and a few volunteers and each year more and more people get involved. The T-shirts and rubber gloves are donated by Shelter Island Heights Hardware.

“I map out routes, give each group their own, I put the small kids in the center, send the adults out to Ram Island, Silver Beach, all over, really. They bag it up, leave it on the side of the road and I pick it up and drive it to the dump. There are six to seven hundred pounds of it every year.” And then he added, “It’s disappointing, really, how much trash there actually is.” And a  lot of trash means a lot of work to clean-up the Island.

“At the end of the day, my kids always want to know what happened today and you know, some times it’s funny and some times it’s not — like the truck will break down or I’ll get a mess all over me, but that’s the way it is,” Dan commented. “Hopefully my kids would like to take this over some day when they’re old enough and I’m too tired, that would be nice.”

At any rate, their dad seems glad he made the move. Now if he could only straighten out that confusion — he’s Shelter Island Sanitation, 749-3075.