Today is our once a week "rubbish collection" and we have never been so grateful for a trash day. It's the day when I bound out of bed, run down the "ladders", and happily take out our very smelly refuse.
There are no cans outside, no cans in a garage, and the seagulls get into our trash if we leave it out on our tiny porch. Hence, we usually have very smelly trash by the time collection rolls around every week.
On Monday night, a day I like to call Trash Day Eve, I scour the flat for things to throw away. Nearly finished box of cereal. Adios! Almost empty jar of pickles. See ya! 1/16 left in the Aveda Color Enhancing shampoo bottle. Tot ziens! I just cannot take the risk of those emptying in the middle of the week.
Of course, people on the street must think I am strange (like most of my friends already do). I will surreptitiously throw a chicken bone in the public rubbish bin on my way to the store if I know it is going to be a long time between pickups.
A few more things that strike me as different when you stay in the Netherlands:
- No recycling pickup - Paper is picked up once a month but other than that, you are on your own should you choose to recycle. This is a typical Dutch solution. The economics and environmental impact are debatable if municipalities pick it up curbside. Dutch solution: easy-to-empty bins (for trucks that is) at select locations around town.
- Deposit bottles go to the store - there is a large deposit on some bottles (EUR 0.25). Shaw's in Massachusetts has these sorts of machines although the small deposit makes it less tempting. The machine prints a ticket that you take to the cashier for a refund. I cannot figure out which ones are deposit and which ones are not, yet.
- Al Cans Don't Recycle? - I have not figured out where to take the few aluminum cans we have. At the recycling center I only see glass and paper. I have not seen any plastic either now that I think about it by the city hall says there are places to deposit those recyclables as well. Also no steel can (e.g., soup cans) recycling
- Plastic bags - Small plastic bags, the current scourge of humanity, are still widely available at the grocery and retail stores for free, unlike what I saw in Germany. Most people opt to purchase a reusable, heavier-grade bag of rice paper or plastic for a nominal charge. I don't see a lot of people with the designer bags that you see in the States and other places. My Gucci, collapsible bag certainly makes me standout.
A bit of regulation at the expense of marketing would probably make sense here as well as in the United States. The banks of the Maas river were covered with plastic bags and I have seen them skimming the bags out of the moat in front of the iconic parliament building.
My uncle told me a good idea: all packaging of a particular type should be the same color. For example, all food plastic should be brown, all heavy-grade cleaning plastic blue, all glass brown, etc. That way it could be easily sorted by machine. Apparently, glass is not worth very much when the colors get mixed. These days there are people who sort this glass by hand as it flies by on a conveyor. Yikes!
My uncle told me a good idea: all packaging of a particular type should be the same color. For example, all food plastic should be brown, all heavy-grade cleaning plastic blue, all glass brown, etc. That way it could be easily sorted by machine. Apparently, glass is not worth very much when the colors get mixed. These days there are people who sort this glass by hand as it flies by on a conveyor. Yikes!
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