So, I said in October that one of the things I miss is recycling. I've since realized that recycling does happen here, just not in an institutionalized manner.
Every city street here has a set of big dumpsters that are emptied by the municipality on a regular basis. People gather up their household trash in plastic bags (usually grocery bags), and then when they leave the house to go somewhere - and most people walk, I think - they take the bag and then just chuck it in the nearest dumpster as they walk past it. Included in household waste are plastic and glass bottles of all shapes and sizes, and this is what I see people fishing out of the dumpsters, especially on Sundays. They seem quite organized about it - if unofficial. It's always the same people at the same dumpsters, and they have bicycles fitted out with big baskets or even basically push carts to haul stuff away. I don't know where they take it but if they're retrieving it I assume it must have some kind of reuse value if not technically recycling.
Terry heard that the people who do this are usually Roma; I wouldn't know for looking at them, necessarily. When I remember to I separate out our recyclable stuff so that people don't have to pick through dirty diapers in order to find it.
1 comment:
That's interesting. Somebody somewhere has a use for this "garbage". I wonder what they do with the stuff they take away.
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