All things recyclable

As long as I remember we have been separating out garbage. It started with paper and glass. The paper we separated out for collection at my primary school. Every Friday we would bring with us the paper (newspapers mostly) of the previous week for collection. With the money the school could support activities at the school or fund a good cause.

Collection of paper is still more or less used that way in a lot of places. In my current town, the local government provides a truck and driver and volunteers then help to pick up the paper collected from the homes to sell and funds go to local community activities. 

Glass, initially all together but in later years separated out by color (white, green, and brown/everything else), is collected at different points throughout the towns/cities. You have to bring it there yourself. The containers can mostly be found in areas with supermarkets but also throughout the neighborhoods. Of course beer bottles can also be brought back to the supermarket for a refund (you actually pay a deposit on the bottles when you but them and can get the deposit refunded when you bring the crate/bottles back).

Apart from glass and paper everything else used to be thrown in the regular garbage. Since 1994 we also started to collect food/vegetable/fruit remainders and garden greens separately. This is turned into compost. Most homes have a green container (see picture) in which to deposit. The container with the blue cover is for paper. The complete grey one for all the remaining garbage.

Since last year, we are also collecting plastic separately. Every other Tuesday in my town you can find big plastic bags of all things plastic on corners of streets (see picture). It is funny how people have gotten used so much to separating out stuff and how quickly also the separation of plastic has picked up. It is just a very funny sight as all the bags are transparent so you can see all kinds of colors through it. 

Until now they are not able yet to recycle all the plastic they receive. Numbers vary depending on who you ask between 50 and 70% of the plastic (government numbers only look at output while the plastic recyclers look at the plastic that is inputted into the process). The good thing is that a lot of plastic does not just end up with the regular garbage anymore.

Sometimes people exaggerate when it comes to recycling. My newspaper features a reader's story of 100 words on the back of the newspaper each day. One of them recently told the story of how a woman came into a pharmacy to pick up some medicine. When she was handed the medicine she asked if she could get a bag. So the pharmacist provided the lady with a paper bag. The lady wanted to know whether she could get a plastic bag to which the pharmacist responded that they did not have plastic bags for environmental reasons. Then apparently the lady remarked that she was collecting as many plastic bags as she could to make sure that her plastic collection bag would be filled every other week. She hated to put out a half-empty collection bag .... True story.

I guess, that separating out garbage for recycling is a good thing. An even better thing though would be to produce less garbage in the first place. And not accepting plastic (or any bag for that matter) is of course the easiest start. I have just decided I will switch from a paper-version newspaper to the electronic version. More trees to be saved! Although I guess my newspaper is also printed on recycled paper.

Whether recycling is always worth it is a question I have never really looked into. It is true though that companies are still willing to pay for recyclables so I guess there must be some benefit to it.

So here is to recycling!

Have a great week!
Rose