Something you don't think about until you are in a different place is how trash is handled. Italians do a lot of recycling. It is mandated in some places, but not here in Ferrara. However, it is still made easy.
There is no household trash pickup. There are dumpsters all along the streets (there is one about 30 yards from our front door) for people to put their trash in. All the dumpsters are color coded as to what kind of waste they are for. Gray dumpsters, which are the most common, are for general household trash. Brown, the second most common, is for yard waste like leaves, bush trimmings, etc. Then there are recycling dumpsters along the street about half as often as the brown and gray. Yellow ones are for plastic, blue is for cardboard and paper, and green is for glass and aluminum. I don't quite understand why glass and aluminum are put in together, but at least they can be recycled. Occasionally you see white containers for clear glass only. There are even containers in about half the recycling areas for old clothes and shoes to be donated to charity. There are also small clear containers in different places around town for old batteries. One thing I have not found is recycling for steel cans. In some places, but not as much in Ferrara, you find containers for "organico" or food waste, which is then composted.
There is a large center on the other side of town where you can take bulk recycling items (I took some of the packing boxes and paper there 2 weeks ago), paper, glass, cardboard, and even appliances and oil. It is free if you have a residence in the city, and if you don't you pay a small amount per kilogram of material discarded. They weigh your car when you enter and again when you leave to figure out how much you dropped off.
I was always shocked by how few people in the US recycle, even when pickup is included in your garbage bill. I am glad to see that some places are better about that.
3 comments:
I am so glad to hear about the recycling. Our pick-up recently gave us new bins the same size as our trash cans. We can recycle plastics from 1-5, cardboard, newspapers and magazines, and even junk mail. They still take glass steel, and aluminum. Sadly, I am one of the few that I see putting my bin out on recycle day.
We are some of the few that recycle here too, but I see more people doing it. I have been surprised that most of the people I see at the recycle center are about my age. Very few younger people.
They are much better at recycling in Europe, worse in the Middle East than the US. I am surprised that they combine aluminum abd glass, you can classify them fairly well by mass, glass is much higher. There is a recycle center near me hear in Warrensburg, at the Sheltered Workshop for Johnson County, I imaging the workers sort the stuff. They apparently do not take glass.
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