See title. I realized that trash collection systems sometimes differ between streets… so this is just about where you live, whether it is one specific street/building or an entire country. No need to mention exactly where if you don’t feel comfortable.
For where I currently live. Government makes colored trash bags (plastics/metals, papers, organic, general waste, etc) that people can buy at local supermarkets, and these bags are required for trash collection. On collection day we just… place the bags outside of the houses/apartments. Some places buy their own trash bins too, but they are rare.
The place I live in seem to take recycling very seriously. I’ve heard from colleagues that putting the wrong things in a bag sometimes result in the “trash police” sending a fine to where you live. Allegedly the police do that by looking at where your last letter/Amazon/random delivery address (in your paper recycling bag) was sent to…
My understanding is that it is a surprisingly effective recycling system… but with the downside that 1) the city doesn’t look particularly great on/after trash collection day, and 2) sometimes the local wildlife will rip open the trash bags
Edit: some more details regarding where I live if anyone is interested. Most people only use four colored bags that are collected per week: blue (plastic, metal, something else…), yellow (paper-based recyclables), white (“residual”, essentially non-recyclable items), and orange (kitchen waste). There are also bags for garden waste and heavy waste, but they are not picked up from residential addresses. Glass is either returned to the supermarket (beer bottles) or disposed of at specific dropoff bins. Things like batteries/electronics are specific, I just take them back to the store. There are also pink bags, but they are only used by businesses
There are some little organisations like Pedal People that collect and dispose of waste via bicycle. I don’t have something like this in my area, but it’d be nice.
US deep south. There is no recycling… everything just goes into a landfill. It’s fucking stupid.
USA, Virginia: My county does not have municipal trash collection, so we either haul our own trash to convenience centers, or pay a private service to pick it up. The landfill and convenience centers are run by a private company and it seems to work pretty well, except for recycling. The county only recycles paper/carboard, metal, and #1 and #2 plastic, and for #2 plastic the opening of the container must be narrower than the container. We don’t recycle glass or any other plastics. Apparently my neanderthal neighbors couldn’t be arsed to rinse out the containers and the people whose job it was to sort it out refused to accept any more recycling from us until we made changes. And most of the county still just tosses everything in the trash compactors. I think our county-wide recycling rate is just under 25%.
I like the system better than when I lived in a city where we had trash pickup. I can go drop off when I need to instead of missing trash day, having trash pile up waiting for trash day, or having it not picked up because it was “too heavy,” or some other reason. It doesn’t cost me anything other than gas, and we can usually combine the drop off with grocery shopping or other errands. I just wish we were better at recycling. My daughter lives in a city with single-stream recycling - all the trash and recycling goes in the same container and it gets automatically sorted at a processing facility.
Thrash can and recycling bin. Everything is mixed in the bin so I expect most of it is sent to a third world country or ends up on a landfill anyways.
Recycling is a lie.
In Derbyshire, UK, we have three bins with different colour lids.
Green- domestic waste, generally bound for landfill, sometimes waste to energy. Anything can go in here but we are deterred from putting toxic material such as batteries in this bin.
Grey- recyclable material such as paper, metal and glass. Some have separate containers for glass.
Brown- garden waste. This one is optional and there is an additional £40 annual fee to use the service (the others are included in the council tax).
Appliances can be left by the roadside and a privately operated metal recycling company will eventually find these. Many scrap yards will buy cars and pay by the kg for the metal. I got about £200 for my 1996 Volvo V40 (~1400kg). Anything else can be disposed of at municipal waste processors which is free for domestic users and charged for commercial waste.
@zlatiah we have weekdays for diferent trash…
Common monday and thurdsday
Glass tuesday
Paper wednesday
Plastic fridayWe just put the trash outside in bags or in our trashcan at night and its collected in the morning
Ireland
It’s privatized so we pay monthly based on weight and a standing charge.
3 wheelie bins, one black for general rubbish, one green for recyclables, one brown for compost. Our collection is weekly for black bin and alternate the other bins every week.
Recycling is clean dry waste including paper, plastic, tins. Glass is brought separately yourself to bottle bins and sorted by colour. Usually there are charity run bins for old clothes there too.
We have a return system for plastic and cans too which are at supermarkets usually and you get your deposit back, 15c for small stuff, 25c for larger.
All this means we have in the kitchen… 1 rubbish bin, 1 recycling bin, 1 compost bin, 3 large bags for bottles by colour, 1 large back for return stuff. And it’s not a big space, it’s a real pain.
I live on a very narrow street with a turn that the big truck can’t get up. So a guy comes in a pickup truck to get it. I can’t put too much out or else he’ll refuse it. Happened a couple times when I was gutting parts of my house. I just drove around the city and found random dumpsters.
This whole area does not recycle I found out. We’ll have separate collection for recycling, but it all goes to the same dump in this county.
We only have garbage, and “recycling”. Nothing else.
2 x 240L wheelie bins - one for dry mixed recycling, the other for residual waste. They are collected on alternating weeks.
We could pay for a third for green waste, but we compost instead (and have a bokashi bin to assist with that).
There are a few communal glass bins around which we will drop stuff off to as we pass from time to time, since that is not included in the DMR selection.
Soft plastics - bags, film etc - are also not included, but can be recycled at supermarkets - or collected by them when they make a home delivery (which is what we do).
Tetrapaks, WEEE, batteries etc need to be taken to the local recycling centre. We’ll book a slot about once a quarter for that.
Here we have colour and symbol coded trash bins :3. Blue with a square is paper, green with a circle is glass, yellow with a triangle is plastic, sometimes there’s also one for fabrics/clothes. Houses generally have smaller trash bins with wheels, apartments have either bigger standalone containers, or underground ones. I think most of the recycling here happens through the bottle/can return machines at stores tho
Three bins, Trash, Recycling, Yard Debris.
Recycling and Yard get picked up every week.
Trash is every other week.
Frankly, I wish trash was weekly too!
Sounds a lot like Japan. There’s colored bags that you can buy at the store for “combustible” and not waste. Then there’s metal and glass pickup, small yard waste (mostly twigs), electronics, paper, and certain plastic has a dropoff. I’ve never heard of trash police issuing fines, but they’ll leave your items behind if it’s the wrong day or type.
When I lived in the US it was just two bins - trash (which was really anything you can fit in a bag, nobody checks) and recycling. Recycling varied by municipality but it was mostly single-stream glass, metal, and most plastics. Things like plastic bags and Styrofoam couldn’t go in the recycling but most places like the grocer would take bags or fluorescent bulbs or batteries.
Of course, multiple studies have shown that most plastics just end up burned or in the ocean so guess it doesn’t much matter how they are collected…
we have separate sorting bins for plastic, paper, metal, cardboard, compostables, newspapers, clear glass, dark glass, batteries, lamps, and “household waste”. bottles and cans go back to the store for credit. other stuff like oils, chemicals, electronics, wood, and appliances goes to a bigger recycling facility outside of town.
it works fairly well. we don’t really have landfills anymore. the biggest problem is people not giving a shit if the receptacles are full and either cramming their shit in or just leaving it outside.
It’s a pretty good simple system here. You have two wheely bins, one red lid for rubbish and the other yellow lid for non glass recycling, and you have a much smaller bin for the glass. Rubbish goes out every week, recycling goes out every other week, and the specific day depends on your suburb (mine is Monday). You just leave your bin on the side of the road the night before your rubbish day, and bring your bin back once the rubbish truck has been past.
We have a blue bin for recyclables, a green bin for organics, and a trash can for non-recyclables. Leaf and yard trimmings are put in a bag or tied into a pile.
