Friday, February 17, 2017

Trash Talk

Here in Nova Scotia, the government takes trash seriously. You have to separate your trash. You have to. And you have to put it in see-through bags, dividing paper and cardboard from cans, glass and plastic.  You get to put out one opaque bag for waste and anything you might want to hide from your neighbors.

If you don't do this exactly right--say you put a Coke can in with the paper--then not only does the truck not pick up any of it, but the trash police, a squarely built, pleasant woman, comes to your door and tells you what mistakes you've made.

Okay, that's great, but the thing is they only collect the garbage every other Tuesday, unless there's a blizzard and then you have to wait another two weeks.

Here's the problem: you're allowed 5 large bags of trash every two weeks. One black, waste, and the other four clear bags divided between recyclables and paper. If you move into a place and are buying supplies for your house, you're going to have lots of extra cardboard and paper. Then you miss trash day, because you 're clueless--

Our basement is filled with bagged trash.

We thought of dumping it in dumpsters behind businesses, but guess what, they're all locked. You never see a waste can out in front of a store, because they don't want your waste. Take it home and put it in your own can.

This means we have to find the dump, named Larkspur Meadows. And don't think you can blithely dump things there. They, too, inspect the clear bags.

Every other week, people? Really?




4 comments:

  1. Same here and it drives me crazy!!!

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  2. We only have "voluntary" recycling, and that means if we choose to recycle, we have to haul that to the recycle center ~ 15 miles away. If we opt out of recycling, our garbage company is happy to haul our trash away to the tri-country dump. To set (and not bio-degrade).

    So we recycle, and sort, to haul ~ 15 miles away, except for the weeks I am headed east to another town, which happily accepts "single-stream" recycling: no need to sort!

    I think your way is fine, and will become habit in no time at all. #PollyAnna

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  3. Well welcome to the 21st century! We've never understood why Utahans haven't embraced recycling. Good that Nova Scotia is increasing your footprint consciousness. Way back in the day in rural Saskatchewan we burned our garbage each week. That was before aerosol cans. Before environmentalists raised our awareness of the carbon we were happily sending into the cosmos each week.

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  4. I am re-visiting this post. I wonder if I can do the same procedure? This inquiring mind wants to know.

    I shall report back next month.

    ReplyDelete