Garbage

I've been planning this post for awhile, taking all the pictures I would need to illustrate it fully.  I thought we recycled a lot in Seattle but the Germans have us beat.  Maybe it's only the Munichians, I guess I don't know about all of Germany.  In our front yard we have a special area, kind of like a shed, with doors on our side of the fence and doors on the street side of the fence.  Inside it we have three containers (pretty small), one for biological (yard waste, compost), one for paper and one for garbage. 

When the garbage trucks to come to empty the containers in my front yard they just open the door, take out the container to empty it and then put it back. I don't have to put it out on garbage day or anything like that.


Around the corner are some huge containers that the whole neighborhood uses for plastic/styrofoam, white glass, brown glass, green glass and tin/aluminum.  I regularly see people, even little kids, carrying a a sack or bucket to the recyclers and then walking home again.

In Munich you can recycle anything plastic: shrink wrap, candy wrappers, meat wrap, anything at all that is plastic even if it is contaminated by food.  You also recycle plastic bottles, but you do that by taking them to any store and returning them for a credit.  Styrofoam, even styrofoam peanuts, can be recycled with the plastic.  The milk comes in cardboard cartons with a plastic spout and lid.  Since it's got plastic on it you recycle it with the plastic. ( I was cutting the spout out of the carton for awhile so I could put the carton in paper and the spout in plastic. Then a nice neighbor told me what I should do.)  (By the way milk is sold by the liter, that's approximately 1/4 of a gallon, and we used to buy 8 gallons of milk per week in the US) You can also recycle anything paper, even if it has food on it, like pizza boxes. 

When we moved into the house there was a unit under the sink that slid out and had three kind of small compartments that I figured was for sorting recyclables.  It probably is for that but I was emptying them several times a day. 

So now I use those for biological, tin/aluminum (including tinfoil) and glass, since we don't have much of that, relatively speaking.  I quickly had to buy a laundry sorter with three compartments to sort the plastic, paper and garbage.  (What could possibly be left to go into the garbage, you might ask?  I don't know, but it always fills up.)  I empty those about every other day. 

It's good that there is so much recycling because the garbage container is so small we'd never fit a week's worth of garbage in it otherwise.

So here's the good part.  The "plastic" bag fills up fastest.  When the "paper" bag fills up I take it into the front yard and put it in the container.  Same with garbage.  But when the "plastic" bag fills up I usually throw it in the garage until the next time I'm going out.  Often I end up with 4 or 5 bags of plastic when I finally go around the corner to the big recyclers. 

This is after I've emptied three bags already

The openings on the big plastic recycle container are about as big as a soccer ball.  I usually can't compress my bag of plastic recyclables enough to fit through the hole so I have to stick my hand in the bag and pull things out to put them in the big container until what's left in the bag is small enough that I can compress it and fit it in.  Remember that all plastic is in there, like the yogurt containers (unrinsed), the cream containers (same size and shape as yogurt containers and unrinsed), the supposedly empty milk cartons, etc.  In other words, it's not all dry and it's often sticky. 

And that's not all.  I've managed to set up sorting containers for all types of recyclables in the kitchen, but what about each bathroom and each bedroom?  When I'm so carefully sorting everything in the kitchen how can I just bring the other garbages down and throw them carte blanche into the garbage?  I have to stick my hand in those too and at least give it a good faith effort at sorting! 

So anyone who is jealous about us living here and being able to visit castles and such, just think about what we have to do to recycle.  Plus, if we decided to just forego the recycling we'd be creating enough garbage to fill 6 or more garbage containers a week and our neighbors would not think well of us. 

PS.  I just found out today there is a recycling inspector that comes around and checks to make sure you're not putting recyclables into the garbage!