Mommy, where does the garbage go when it leaves our house?

(As promised and introduced yesterday in Guest Post by Alison Amazed–here’s Alison, blogger extraordinaire and a truly amazing individual. Be sure to stop by her blog and give it a look.)

By Alison Boston http://www.alisonamazed.wordpress.com

Jenn asked me to write a guest blog post on recycling and I shrugged my shoulders and thought: “What’s to say? Just do it.”

I grew up in Canada, and started recycling in the early 80’s while living in Ottawa. At first it was a pain to have to wash‘n’squash cans.  By the time I left Canada in 2002 it was as much a habit as brushing my teeth.  In Montreal, the last city I lived in, we had to buy special colour-coded garbage bags from city hall, one for recycling and one for rubbish.  If you cheated and put recyclable items in the wrong bag, and they caught you, you got a ticket in the mail.  We had curb-side recycling pick-up, so there really was no excuse for putting cans and jars, paper and plastic in the garbage bag!

You can imagine my frustration, shock, and horror when I went to live in Hungary and saw the state of garbage disposal.  I had to walk 5-10 minutes to my nearest recycle depot. I always forgot to take it with me when I left home so it piled up until I had to get someone to help me carry it! But throw it in the garbage? Never!

In Spain the recycling dumpsters were next to the garbage dumpsters, so it wasn’t such a hassle to practice my Canadian habit.  And I recall having special reusable plastic bags, colour-coded for each type of recycling.  They came in sets of three, and were designed to stand up, and stick together with Velcro tabs.

When I got to the U.K. it was even better: special boxes for recycling, provided by the city.  I felt like I’d returned to civilisation so was appalled and disgusted when I learned that my neighbours didn’t recycle.  They just chucked everything in the ‘bin’ – as they call it here.

When I moved into the four-plex I now live in, I was told by a neighbour that the ‘the one in flat 1 doesn’t recycle and complains about the fact that the guy in flat 2 leaves the recycling box outside the front door.’ In the first conversation I had with the flat 1 resident, I was asked if I recycle.  When I said yes, she rolled her eyes and shut the door to her flat.  People can be so lazy!

But I gotta ask you, if you don’t recycle it, where on this earth do you think it goes?

But there’s hope….Go Team Canada – yeah!