Garbage management

There is a parking lot about three miles away from me, kind of away from everything else. There are four huge dumpsters, and one is to recycle plastic, one for cardboard, one for glass, and one for batteries. I take all my recycled items there. The rest of the stuff goes into my apartment complex dumpster. Whereas, my dad’s neighborhood has one bin for regular trash that is picked up on Mondays, and Tuesdays the bins for plastic and aluminum are picked up.

No worries here at all..I walk to the dumpster and throw it away..that is all I have to do. But I have to be very careful to make sure, a person does not jump out at me as there are the ones rooting through the garbage to find treasure...not just homeless ones, but greedy snakes of persons in the complex here.

We burn a lot of our trash and we compost.

So you asked what do we do. We put all our recyclable packaging in the bin for that after washing and drying it. I save up lots of packaging materials such as cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, padded envelopes to use any time I need to post something fragile. If I accumulate too much I give away the extra via Freegle to people who need some. I save up clean jars and bottles to use for my own preserves over and over again. We collect up plastic bags and take to the supermarket to recycle. We do try to avoid accumulating too much by using re-usable bags for vegetables when shopping. And I always have 5 or 6 re-usable shopping bags in my little bag that I carry with me, so I never need to buy any more. We have virtually no food waste as all peelings etc go into our compost bin for use in the garden, or else the chickens eat any scraps of meat etc. The only thing left is if we eat chicken and have bones or scraps to dispose of as we mustn't feed those to the chickens. We do have a lot of garden waste as we have a big garden. Even though I compost a lot (we have 8 compost bins) and I mulch the garden with leaves, grass clippings and shredded branches, there are still some things we have to get rid of such as really thorny prunings, diseased material, or perennial weeds, so those go in the garden waste bin (and they get composted at the waste place and eventually spread on farmland). So basically we try to cut down the actual 'rubbish' as much as possible. And we try to create less - for example we save and re-use the same wrapping paper over and over, we have an artificial Christmas tree which we've used for years and years, we use the same decorations again and again (some people actually buy new every year and then throw it all away!)

It is a big issue here too, even though there have been household waste collections for decades. These days we have a weekly collection, but for different things, on a two-week cycle. So one week they collect non-recyclable waste (which here, goes to an incinerator to generate power) plus a separate collection of food waste which also goes to a separate fermenter to produce gas. The other week they collect recyclable things - glass, some plastic packaging, cans, paper and cardboard. Plus food waste again. And there is also a garden waste collection but we have to pay extra for that. Then there are other things like plastic bags, which can be taken to supermarkets where they have collection points. And used batteries, which can be dropped off in shops - any shop that sells batteries has to have a collection point for the used ones. There are also household waste recycling centres where you can dispose of other odds and ends like light bulbs, used engine oil, metal bits and pieces, old clothes, rubble etc. But unless you live near one it's a bit of a nuisance to have to go there with just one old saucepan or something like that.