Personal experience: sorting garbage in the USA

Today our author, popular blogger and experienced American Elena Dupina decided to talk about ... garbage. Or rather, about sorting it!

Over the past year and a half, I have managed to live in 4 countries: Russia, Norway, Germany, USA. All of them deal with garbage differently, now I can compare and share with you. And what - I'm not sorry if you're interested!

I left Moscow (I lived in Severnoye Medvedkovo, rented a one-room apartment) in April 2015. She lived in a high-rise building with a garbage chute on Shirokaya Street. We didn’t sort anything there, they threw all the garbage into the garbage chute - indiscriminately. There were huge bins on the street - also without sorting, you throw out everything. Recently, at a friend's office in the FB I read that they began sorting garbage in Moscow. Who lives there - share how you are doing with the garbage?

Then I moved to my husband in Norway (city of Larvik, Vestfold commune, one and a half hours by car from Oslo). We had a house there, an 3 container for each house, and we sorted the garbage like this:

• Food waste;
• Plastic;
• Paper and cardboard (tetrapack thrown there);
• Glass - they were taken to the store, to a special receiving machine: he took aluminum cans (soda, beer), plastic bottles and glass bottles and cans - and gave out a coupon for money. Give the coupon at the checkout, and you can get a discount or cash for this amount!
• Clothes and shoes were handed over to large special containers placed in the city.

Garbage from the containers at the house was taken on different days specified in a special calendar.

In Germany we lived in Bavaria, in the center of Regensburg, and rented an apartment. In our house on the ground floor there was a special room with garbage cans - they took the garbage there, and the manager (Janitor) then rolled them out onto the street for collection with garbage trucks - each of the three types of garbage was picked up on its own day (that is, there were 3 “garbage” days every week: yesterday they took away paper, today - food waste, the day after tomorrow - plastic). Garbage is sorted as follows:

• Food waste;
• Paper and cardboard;
• Plastic (tetrapacks were thrown into plastic, not into paper!);
• The glass had to be sorted by color: clear, green, brown - and attributed to the large containers placed around the city. Throw away bottles / cans clearly by the color of the glass!
• Plastic bottles and aluminum cans were taken to the store, the procedure was the same as in Norway, with a coupon;
• Clothes and shoes are like in Norway.

Now I live in America, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The city allocates only one plastic tank for recyclable waste; for the rest of the garbage you buy the packages yourself. Our garbage is sorted like this:

• Food waste;
• Paper + plastic + glass (not broken!) Refer to recyclable (recyclable) - and all are thrown into ONE container!
• Aluminum cans and plastic bottles - as in Norway and Germany - are taken and handed over to an automated collection point at the store;
• Clothes and footwear - similarly - are carried to special containers placed around the city.

In our town, garbage is picked up clearly on one day of the week (every Thursday), but by different cars, they drive in turn right in the morning. In the city of the husband's father - on Tuesdays, and in the neighboring Saint Clair Shores (this is where I went to the post office on foot at Periscope, remember?) - on Mondays. In the evenings on the eve of a “trash” day, pick-up trucks (these are such cars with an open body) drive through the streets and pick up everything that they like from your garbage: old equipment, furniture, all sorts of pieces of iron (to hand over this stuff and earn money!).

It is important to note that plastic bottles and glass jars, based on my experience of living abroad, do not accept all, but only those which cost includes the return value of containers. They have a special badge on the label.

And how are things with garbage sorting?

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