Trash


Another post I know you've all been waiting for! All about trash! Much like laundry, trash and recycling here have made me realize how differently Americans live from most of the world.

We produce SO much less trash since we've moved here. To be totally honest, I'm not entirely sure why. We haven't changed our habits too much in terms of what we eat. I've always made most of our food from scratch, we buy most of our clothes, books, and toys used. Really, I can't totally account for it. But our production of trash has at least halved, and probably been cut to a third of what we used to throw away.

Part of it is definitely packaging. The picture above is the standard packaging for garbage bags here, for example--just a strip of paper wrapped around a roll of plastic bags. In the United States the same bags would come in a big bulky box.

Perhaps part of it is the recycling system here, too. I know this differs across the UK, but where we live, figuring out recycling requires an advanced degree. We have not one, not two, but FIVE different containers for various types of waste: a food waste bin, a trash waste bin, cardboard, plastic, and combined glass and paper. The pickup system is crazy, too. Every other Tuesday you put everything out, and then on the alternate Tuesdays you put out only food waste and yard waste (oh, there's a sixth bin for yard waste, but we don't have it--you have to purchase it and we haven't gotten around to it.) Anyway, they give you a whole calendar to help you keep it all straight, because it changes on holidays.

So maybe, since it took me a few weeks to figure it all out, as well as several consultations with people in the village and finally a visit to the District Council headquarters (no, I am not kidding), I am so invested in recycling that I recycle more here?

Finally, it might just be a size-of-trashcan incentive. The cans we have here are half the size of an average can for one single American house. And we share two of them with three cottages. So maybe I'm more self-conscious about being the foreigner who hogs the trashcan and therefore I recycle more? In any case, we barely fill a small kitchen-sized trashcan every week, and in America we took that same sized trash out a few times a week.

Not saying we should all move to a system that involves six bins of various sizes and colors, or a complicated calendar for pickup, but it has once again made me reflect on habits I never really though much about before. (Okay, that's not entirely true. I have a sufficiently large crunchy-granola streak that I have indeed thought about trash before...But it's still been interesting to be here.)

Comments

  1. Unknown8 June 2018 at 21:59

    Seattle is pretty good on recycling but I remember flying through Logan Airport in Boston and being shocked that the airport only had traditional trash cans throughout. SeaTac has 4-hole receptacles everywhere.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rachel8 June 2018 at 23:59

      Interesting re Logan. I never noticed that. Cambridge and Somerville where we lived we're very recycle-focused and even had city compost pickup. And the recycling was streamlined and therefore easier...and yet I still threw away tons more...weird.

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