New York's supposed to be a liberal/progressive town, right? (Heh. Cynthia, my former landlady, would laugh at my use of "town" instead of "city.") With all sorts of civilized amenities like public transportation and fluoridated water and traffic jams and stuff? Recycling, you would think, should number among such things.
But not in Yonkers. No, in Yonkers, we make recycling as complicated as we can muster without being accused of being obstructionist. We have weekly recycling pick-up, yep, sure do. But rather than something convenient--say, a single recycling pick-up on the same day as garbage collection--we have two separate types of recycling: Paper (which includes white bond paper, cardboard, and newspaper, but not OJ or rice milk cartons or magazines) and Commingles (which includes plastics--but only plastics 1 & 2, and only if they're bottle-shaped, I believe--steel and aluminum cans, and glass). There is a special recycling day that is entirely different from trash day, and on that day, only one of the two given categories will be picked up. The categories alternate weeks and are adjusted strangely in the case of a holiday. We have a special calendar to remind us when these things happen. It is tiny and difficult to understand, much like the Florida ballots from the 2000 presidential election. It almost seems like the City of Yonkers doesn't want us to recycle...
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In Zettmannsdorf, which is a dorf, mind you, not even on par with the common notion of "town," our trash bins were literally half the size of the standard-issue barrels that people manage to cram full each week here in Portland. And for good reason: hardly anything qualified as trash. ALL plastics--bottles, milk cartons, cling wrap, literally everything made of plastic--went out in yellow plastic bags on one day of the week; garbage, paper products, and "bio," scrupulously separated, went out on another day (and woe betide your bank account if the sorters found so much as an eggshell misdisposed in your trash can). Metals and the different colors of glass could not be deposited into any of the above containers, you had to sort and dispose of them into the appropriate recepticles at the edge of the dorf, and under your own steam. Nitpicky, yes, but efficient.
Unfortunately, it will be a looong time before such a program goes into effect in the States because people in general are so motherfucking lazy and they have way too much space in which to dump (both legally, as in landfills, and under the radar, as in driving yer truck full o' garbage out into the woods) all the crap they don't fancy sorting.
I know. That really pisses me off. (The attitudes in the US toward waste.) I'm utterly amazed at the German recycling program. I hear Canada does pretty similar things. Maybe I'll move.
We have centralized locations - e.g. the nearest street corner - for dropping off refuse in each community. The only problem is that there's dumpster or anything of that sort; just a sign saying leave your trash here on such-and-such a day. So we have piles of trash bags and loose waste sitting around on most street corners from 21:00 until sometime the next day.
Oh and there's at least three different types of trash days: burnables, unburnables and something else (maybe PET bottles).
Now what exactly constitutes a burnable? Isn't everything technically burnable? You just may not like the results of burning a 50 gallon plastic drum.
You mean everything doesn't go in the same bin? jersey
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