Here in Germany, I seem to spend a whole lot of time sorting trash. Plastic drink bottles (cola, water, o.j. etc) have a deposit on them, and are brought back to the store. Glass bottles have to be carried away to collection dumpsters, and then sorted according to color. Corks and batteries are collected in shops. Small electrical appliances have to be brought to an electronics shop. For "big trash" ie furniture, I have to fill out a form, list all that I want to dispose of, and then am given a date for when the things will be picked up; am allowed to do this twice a year. At home I have 3 different trash cans, all of which cost quite a bit per year. The brown one is for biodegradable things, and is picked up every two weeks in winter, and once a week in summer. In summer, this can is annoying, cuz the flies love it. Then there is the green one, that is for paper and cardboard. Is picked up once a month. Plastic and tin goes in sacks, which are picked up once a month. "Old metal" ie:bicycles, bed frames, etc. are collected every few months, by a wagon driven down the street by a guy ringing a bell to announce his arrival. Christmas trees are picked up by the village volunteer fire department every January; and shoes and old clothes periodically by the Salvation Army. When we needed diapers here, we took the dirty ones to the very stinky diaper recycling facility, every Saturday morning, on the way to the grocery store (with the car full of the empty drink bottles, any corks had collected, and batteries that had recently died).

Sometimes I wonder how much water this trash collecting process wastes (have to rinse out plastic food boxes and tins to be able to stand having them sit around in sacks at home for a month). Sometimes I am annoyed to have to separate packaging-plastic from cardboard, etc. And it was no fun to have smelly diapers around the house for a week, nor is the fly epidemic around the bio-trash any big thrill. Means that flyswatters a necessity in every room of the house. BUT, in the end is all worth it, I hope.
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Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain

Lilly,
I hear you on the complicated re-cycle programs that exist in much of the Euro zone and in other countries... as far as rinsing goes, why not fill up a basin of water, and then you are re-using the same water to rinse the stuff out... like we do when we wash dishes, a basin full of warm soapy water, then a rinse of clean water at the very end -- like the nuns taught me to do as a kid, so as not to waste water, and would slap my wrist with a ruler if I turned the tap on prematurely and wasted even one DROP...

the nuns would sing:

'Every drop is sacred.
Every drop is great.
If a drop is wasted,
God gets quite irate.'

(well, something like that anyways...)
( -;

all in all, i think the benefits of keeping that metal crap out of land fills outweighs any waste of water. if batteries and iron and so on and so on, get into an unsealed land fill, or even a so called 'sealed' landfill, rather than being re-cycled, (even though it has to be rinsed,, I know what you are commenting about) if the rusty shit which ends up in the underground water sources, aquafiers and such, we may lose precious sources of fresh water, which once poisened may never recover... or cause people / animals to get serious diseases or poisened.

if you have cans and such, big zip-lock bags (I mean the really huge ones) can be used to prevent odours from escaping. or in a plastic garbage bag that you seal up...

a recycle center only for diapers! cool!!!

keep in mind, YOUR baby's poop smells like roses, don't it???

one other story of re-cycleing, and how WE are everywhere... back a number of years ago, a buddy of mine was living on Oahu, Hawaii... anyways, long before it became 'fashionable' or law he was heavy into re-cycling EVERYTHING... so we were up toward the north shore, in some of the older 'off the grid' zones, and he always had crates and crates full of glass and cans in the back of his car... we pass some church he knew of, that was collecting bottles because in those days you could actually get money from them, and the church was doing that to raise funds for whatever or what.

so it was mid week, and the place was pretty quiet, we pull up, unload a TON of stuff. a local dude comes rushing out as we were finishing up, and asks, "hey, you guys didn't put any 'trash' in there did you?" my buddy looks at him, and says 'of course not'
the local dude looks down at the bumper of my friends car which had a steal your face or something GD sticker on it... then he says,
'oh hey, I'm sorry, I didn't see you were one of the good guys, we get a lot of people who just dump their house hold garbage here' turns out, that dude was the parish priest, and yes, though not a total deadhead, but i do remmber he commented, that American Beauty was a fine album...

the effort is worth the recycle hassles you may have to endure. and as noonie pointed out, it does feel good to be part of the solution, don't it??

peace.

There are rappers in the world.
There are disco kids.
There are punks and then
There are those that follow MC Hammer but
I've never been one of them.

I'm a deadhead Recycler,
And have been since I was born,
And the one thing they say about deadheads is:
They'll accept you if you're warm.

You don't have to be a six-footer.
You don't have to have a great brain.
You don't have to have any clothes on.
You're A deadhead recycler the moment you came

Because

Every scrap is sacred.
Every can is great.
If a bottle is wasted,
God gets quite irate.

Every scrap is sacred.
Every egg shell is great.
If a re-usable item is wasted,
God gets quite irate.

Let the heathen spill theirs
On the dusty ground.
God shall make them pay for
Each bottle that can't be found.

Every bottle is wanted.
Every can is good.
Every effort is needed
In your neighbourhood.

jerks, fools, mooks,
Spill theirs just anywhere,
But God loves those who treat their
re-cycleables with more care.

Every egg shell is sacred.
Every piece is great.

If a scrap is wasted,...

...God gets quite irate.

Every scrap is sacred.

Every effort is good.

Every effort is needed...

...In your neighbourhood!

Every effort is useful.
Every effort is fine.
God needs everybody's efforts...
Let the wankers spill theirs
O'er mountain, hill, and plain.

God shall strike them down for
Each drop that's spilt in vain.

Every scrap is sacred.
Every can is good.
Every effort is needed
In your neighbourhood.

Every drop is sacred.
Every scrap is great.
If a bottle is wasted,
God gets quite iraaaaaate!

(-;

(humble apologies to Michael Palin and Terry Jones, please forgive me, mates for taking unprecedented liberties)

peace.

Please don't think that I'm being disrespectful by posting a comment AGAINST the use or re-use of plastic containers. Re-cycling is fine but we all must lobby to end the manufacture and use of this dangerous substance. Polyethylenetriphosphate (or PET) is the most common plastic used for drinking containers of all varieties of beverage, along with Bisphenol-A, and has been found to have some devastating and possibly irreversible effects on our environment, ourselves, and our children.

The question first arose in Mexico when doctors there started to see that females were developing breasts at a younger and younger age. Here in America the problem was under consideration as well. There was a myth that persisted that it could possibly be milk, attributed to the BGH (Bovine-Growth Hormone) that farmers were giving their cows to produce more milk. This has still not been ruled out as a contributing factor yet it has been found that PET has a greater effect than first thought.

Scientists studying male fish in the Hudson river near NYC found that these fish were not producing sperm....but EGGS. They were tested and found to have very high levels of PET. Polyethylenetriphosphate MIMICS the FEMALE HORMONE ESTROGEN. Between production and retail sale your containers of beverage be it water, soda, or juice...get heated and cooled in storage and transportation a number of times before it is purchased...this leads to leaching of PET into the product....some beverages tested contain enough PET to be equivalent to 1 dose of a birth control pill.

There are a number of psychological and physiological effects that PET has been known to have on humans. Mimicing the female hormone estrogen, it has had a marked effect on the regulated normal growth of our children. Young girls have been starting puberty at the age of 8 and 9 in some instances and finishing at 14 to 16, in boys, it retards the pubescent period and boys have been starting at 13 and 14 and finishing much later than usual, creating an unusual and awkward balance between boys and girls. PET has been known to make girls and women MORE AGGRESSIVE and motivated while having the reverse effect on boys and men....unmotivated and somewhat effeminate. PET has also been linked with ADHD, causing a diagnoses that includes a lifetime of problems and horrible pharmaceutical medications. 50 years ago mankind did not have the number and prevalence of the types of cancer that we have today...plastics have been increasingly manufactured for the past fifty years.

Some companies a very aware that this situation has been increasingly reaching epidemic proportions although it is rarely reported in the mainstream media and some are preparing for a solution. Two companies right now are developing a corn or corn-syrup based product that is fully biodegradable....tossing it on the ground would result in it completely dissolving with no harmful effects to the environment or humans.

For more information about PET and what is causing underachieving and unmotivated boys and men check out Dr. Leonard Sax and his book Boys Adrift.