Whilst hanging out at home, the Bride looked down and saw something that we have never seen before. This thread has to do with rubbish collection, something that one doesn’t think about often. First a little background on how we do garbage collection here. After reading my thread, I would like to hear from you guys how it works where you live. There are basically three main ways that one gets rid of their rubbish—on the appointed day stacking up bin liners on the streets in the historical centres homes, using what we call, kliko’s (large plastic bins on wheels) for folks who live on terraces and in stand-alone homes, and underground for apartment dwellers who can open them with plastic cards. The underground option is because there is no logical place to keep kliko’s. The kliko’s have different coloured tops indicating what is in the kliko; fot instance, green tops for compostables, orange for plastic, cans and milk and drink cartons and dark grey for the rest. There are special places for glass outside supermarkets and paper gets picked up every two weeks. Whew! Right then, that is the background sorted. What my Bride saw for the first time was. Man woth a great lorry washing the inside of the underground receptical. I had never thought about this, but for hygenic reasons it is logical. First foto is off the internet and shows the front of one of these underground recepticals: The truck rides up next to the underground receptical then operates an arn with a handset and he pulls the receptical out of the ground...swings it above the rubbish compartment abd lets it fall in. Then he swings the container over to the washing compartment, lowers it in and it gets washed. Once clean it gets lowered back into its underground cell, and the above ground bit gets spray-washed and Bob’s yer uncle. The washing and pick-up truck looks sorta nice I think. So come on mates, tell me about your sanitary situation.
Sjoerd, we live in a "primitive" area. We have once a week trash pickup with a large truck with grabber arms that pick up our bin and dump it into the truck. If we want to recycle glass, plastic, and cardboard, we have to drive 20 miles to the nearest city in a different county and pay to recycle at that facility. We wash out our trash bid ourselves. We also have a compost pile to take care of cardboard and paper, and any vegetable leftovers. The rest goes to a "dump" where it is buried by large front loaders. We are not happy about not recycling glass and plastic, but we can just do so much to cut down on the landfill load.
Ours and ia similar to Jane's disposal. We have a dumpster that holds a lot of trash. We can recycle in recycling bins at other county or city place bins, but I am not sure how much actually goes to a recycling facility and gets recycled. I try not to put things such as compost or cardboard into it as it takes up space and can be used in the garden. Sometimes it does go in the bin though. The trash truck goes to the shop where we have the dumpster. We don't take that to the road. If we had wheelie buns then we would like all the other people on our road
JANE—Thanks for your explanation. I was gobsmacked to learn that you actually had to pay to have the glass, plastic and cardboard recycled though. What a surprise. If they did that here I fear that people would just secretly dump that sort of stuff in the woods. Well, at least there is a place to take your waste to. Thanks CAROLYN— it is good to hear how things are there. I never thought that I would ever dwell on rubbish so much. I think that I have too much free time on my hands. Haha
We are allowed to put up to 3 bags of trash out on the curb every other week. The recyclables (cardboard, paper, glass, plastic and cans) can go out every week in the 'blue box'. My municipality also has a 'green bin' that holds all the green kitchen waste etc, but I compost so I don't use the green bin. They also have yard waste collection, but again, I compost and also burn wood so I don't put out yard waste. It all magically disappears from the curb.
We have a set of three bins that we keep in the garden. One is for household waste, one for recyclables (paper, cardboard, plastic and cans) and one for garden waste. We also have large bins in the village itself for glass - one for clear glass, one for brown and one for green. We have our own compost bins in the garden but we have to use the brown ones supplied by the council for stuff you would normally burn as they frown on you burning waste here.
To continue the rubbish story— in addition to the kliko’s and underground pick up, we also have a monthly pick up of large refuse (like sofa’s for example) by appointment only. Should a citizen have a variety of rubbish that is large in size or amount, they can also take their stuff to a central collection point called an “environment street” where all rubbish goes into sorting bins. There is also a walk-in container for the thrift shop for things that others could possibly use. You can see the huge metal containers for the rubbish. These all have colourful little signs indicating what goes in where. This is where the sorting comes in, and there are people circulating that can answer questions or correct you if you choose the wrong bin for your rubbish. Quite a bit of rubbish is un-useable and not recycleable, and this goes into the ovens,(producing energy for citizens and / or businesses). The compostables are composted on a massive scale and the compost is offered to the public free of charge once a year. Another positive aspect of the free compost day is that they have shovels for you to use as well as tough plastic bags to place the compost into. Some folks come with a small trailer and a worker scoops up the compost with a machine and dumps it into your trailer. I posted a compost story on here a few years ago: https://www.gardenstew.com/threads/free-compost-day.36809/#post-334811 Eileen, thanks for your info on here. Open fires are more than frowned upon over here— our organization once got a whopping fine because a municipal worker was going home on a train and saw someone burning trash on their lottie. Ouch! Costly. You know, my Bride and I watch “Escape To The Country” every day and are so amazed that everyone wants a fireplace or woodburner in their homes. It looks like you guys sort waste similar to the way we do. You guys do it also a bit similar, Netty. We do not have much green that goes into the green waste as we either chuck it onto our compost piles or feed it to the deer in the deer park next to where we live. I am finding this thread so interesting. Addendum: several of these foto’s were taken from the internet to illustrate what I am trying to say.
S, we have a wood burning furnace in our house. I did not want a fire place that had and open fire but wood heat is much different than gas forced air heat so when we added our addition we put in that for back up heat or main heat... just depends on how much work we want to go to for the wood. the last couple years the gas has been cheap enough to just heat with that instead of burning wood.. and we have a fire pit that is for sitting around on a patio so all the yard sticks get picked up and put in this for fuel for an evening. its a great way to keep the yard cleaned up...so that never goes to the dumpster.
Thanks Carolyn. I like hearing eveyone’s experiences in dealing with refuse. When we lived in Alaska, I was at work the Bride was at home and the wood burner had a fire in the chimney. She was pretty frightened but managed getting it under contol and the little cabin did not burn down. She said, why do these things always happen when you are not at home! Tja, we have some “frontier” stories.
Our town does not provide free trash removal. I think it is that we are too small and trash pick up would increase our taxes quite a bit. We have a town transfer station where the townspeople take their refuse. Recycling is free: clear glass, & brown glass, each in it's own dumpster; cans & plastic go in another; paper & cardboard in a 3rd; and soda cans& bottles get collected by the Boy Scouts (& they benefit from collecting the refund!) Then we have an all purpose dumpster for everything else. Jane, that is a bummer that you have to drive so far to recycle things and pay extra no less!! I agree with Sjoerd, I'd be tempted to just dump it in the trash. But I have been hearing that a lot of what we're *recycle" isn't getting recycled at all. My husband calls it "aspirational recycling":. Thinking you are doing a good thing for the environment but in actuality there is not an adequate infrastructure for recycling stuff & a lot of it gets burned up, landfilled, etc. Sjoerd, you can't have outside fires where you live? For pollution reasons?
Cayu—No, we can’t have open fires generally speaking. It is the municipality that determines what , when and anything can be burnt...if at all. It is because of pollution as you correctly suspected, but also because there is a danger of open fires spreading to houses. We saw here an annual beach fire got out of hand, the wind turned and blew huge amounts of cinders into the city and there were terrible fires and property damages as a result. Small contained fires with “clean” products are allowed for BBQ’s, garden fireplaces and so forth. The burning of trash, painted or treated wood and rubbish is strictly not forbidden anywhere. Our pick ups here at home are not free either. Local taxes pay for infrastural services. Taxes are the way that local and national governments and pay for the services they provide here. Boy, I’d be very p.o’d. If that recycle foolishness was going on here. I believe that there would be a great public protest and political heads would roll over something like that. I like your husband’s term. Clever.
Sjoerd, I think a lot of our plastics, etc were going to China for recycling but China is getting pickier and pickier about what it will take. (can't say that I blame them). I don't know that there is much of a market for recycled plastic as yet. I hope that will change. Do you know where yours goes? I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes if it helped with the recycling. We have a "pay per bag" system. You have to buy bags from the town to use for taking your garbage to the dump. It encourages composting & recycling because recycling is free. Our town does get some money from the recycling of glass & metal. I think the town has to pay for the recycling of plastic. We are a very small town. 80% of our budget goes to fund the schools. I am impressed with your system though.
Re our plastic rubbish. I do not know pricisely where the plastic goes, but I do know that there are some plants in this land that make things out of recycled plastic. Certain plastic bottles, like the litre or litre and a half drink bottles have a deposit on them. You turn those bottles in at the supermarket and get 50 cents for the. It comes out on a strip of paper and you hand this in at the cash register, or if you are paying via checking yourself out...then you can scan the barcode on it before you pay hands free. Wow, 80% of the city budget for schools. That seems alot...a very good target though. Does the remaining 20% go toward the salarys of the municipal workers as well as the infrastructure of your town? Oh, I am learning so much here...but is taking mental work on my part. Thanks folks for contributing.
Yes. The rest pretty much goes for town salaries (other than school personnel) and the highway department. Keep in mind we are a very small town with no industry. We have a handful of stores and one stop light in the whole town. In the States, individual towns foot a portion of the bill for their children's education from property taxes & taxes on industry. The rest of the $ comes from the state. How is education paid for in your country or other countries? Is it nation wide?
Does that men that the towns and the state and/or federal government are in a matching funds scenario with the towns? Or do you guys just get a certain amount of funds annualy(sp?) or quarterly? The education here is free until the high school is completed. After that students who go to technical/vocational schools get that paid for as well. In some cases students that attend uni can be educated free, but others have to pay. Its complicated...some do not have to pay all their fees—some of the education is free and the students pay the rest. I have to say that it has all changed over the years and I did not keep up with it. For students that cannot come up with the funds, they can get interest free loans from the government to complete their studies within ten years.
