Thoughts on Trash

First, a few images from this week....

Bath time for our stinky puppy.  

One of my boys is NOT having fun.

Rainy day fun with Megablocks and marbles.  

"A parking garage for really tall dragons."

On the phone: "How many more days, Pappa?" Clearly we are both eager for  Paolo to come home!

Now to my topic for today....GARBAGE.  I must admit I never thought too much about it before I began these adventures overseas.  Yes, I dutifully carted my can to the curb every Tuesday and Friday. I filled my recycling bin for its weekly pickup.  I grumbled when people did not pick up after their dogs in the park but otherwise was quite unappreciative of the cleanliness of our neighborhood in Georgetown.

And then we moved it Delhi.

A trash heap in Delhi

 Trash was everywhere.  You really could not take a step without encountering it.  There were no public trash cans and few seemed to care about simply discarding whatever they were finished with right where they were standing.  Stray dogs and cows lived off of these massive piles.  As for actual trash collection, we paid someone to come to the house every morning; it was hauled off in a cart to be picked through, sorted, dumped and/or sold.

A trash collector in Delhi

I recommend this book.  The author spent years in one of Mumbai's slums following the life of a young garbage picker.  

And then we moved to Kyiv.  Public trash bins abound.  Teams of women are out each morning to sweep and pick up trash.  People are still prone to leave food wrappers, beer bottles and cigarette butts on the ground but, in general, I do not feel like I have to watch my every step as I did in Delhi. As for our own trash, there are two large dumpsters in the alley outside of our apartment.  One is meant for recycling but it is treated as a regular garbage dumpster by all.  I still dutifully put our plastic, cardboard and glass into it though it is disheartening to see construction debris, old car tires and rotting food in there already.

Ok, so this is not a dumpster in Kyiv, but it is the closest image I could find.
This is often the state of ours;  it is usually not emptied until past over-flowing.  

And so now we come to Italy.  Certainly, Italy has its own bad reputation when it comes to trash.  Mob ties and strikes come to mind.

Remember the strike in Naples a few summers ago? 

Well, we live in the north of Italy where the mafia has much less influence and the rural population means less trash to handle. Here is how the system works here:

Every 10 houses or so there is this neatly maintained collection of  containers on the side of the road.  Big dumpster for general garbage, white for plastic, blue for paper, green for glass-aluminum and brown for food waste.    In some spots there is also a large brown dumpster for landscape refuse (leaves, etc).

In the towns the containers are bigger and there are more choices.
 The big yellow one is for clothing to be recycled.  

And battery recycling is readily available.  I must admit this is the first time in my life
 that I have properly disposed of them!

Of the 4 countries I have now called home, I like the system here in our little Italian village the best.  From what I have observed everyone is very compliant with the idea.  I watched an elderly woman this morning carefully pull a bag from her purse and gingerly deposit her milk carton, soup can and apple core into their respective bins.  The areas around the containers are always neat and when one bin becomes too full, someone puts a large rock on top of it which sends the message to go on to the next collection site to leave your things.  It is difficult to imagine such system ever working in India or in Ukraine.  And, yes, perhaps these trash containers along the road at such frequent intervals might be considered eyesores to those of us in the US who hide our bins in garages or behind gates most of the time. However, I do think the compliance with recycling here is coming from its availability and ease of use.  

Ciao!  xoxo. Clara