Belgium prides itself on being one of the more forward-thinking countries when it comes to refuse collection and recycling. This is commendable, but damn, if they don’t make it difficult.Firstly, the refuse collectors (dustbinmen, residential waste experts, whatever…) will only collect your standard household refuse if it is bagged in specific proprietary bags (with the refuse company’s name on them). Standard black bin bags (heftybags) are just left in your driveway, untouched. This seemed a bit excessive at first, but this is how they charge for the service (a roll of dustbin bags will set you back some EUR20 (around US$25)) and it’s actually a fairer system than most, as what you pay is directly linked to the amount of refuse you ‘produce’ (or is inversely linked to the amount you can cram into a bag without it splitting – which they often do).
‘Recyclable’ material also has to be placed in proprietary bags, color-coded to the type of refuse. Again, this is generally sensible, although I’d argue that the recycling bags should be free (or at least substantially cheaper) to encourage recycling…). However, in my commune, they are very picky about what they will take. They will recycle plastic and cans, but not glass. And they will only take certain types of plastic – they’ll take plastic water bottles but not plastic bags; milk cartons but not yoghurt pots; juice boxes but not drink pouches. It all seems fairly arbritrary, and they don’t really issue much in the way of guidelines. So I know that there is a 50-50 chance that whatever I place out will simply be left on my driveway with a bright red sticker saying “Verbieden Inhoud” (Forbidden Contents) on it, so my neighbors can see that I’m too stupid to know my PTFE from my PTEE.
A couple of weeks ago I put some paper out for collection. This included the contents of my shredder, which I’d thoughtfully put in a plastic bag to avoid the wind turning the neighborhood into a ticker-tape parade. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but this was rejected – no doubt because because I was mixing plastics with my paper. So I had to go out and buy paper sacks (approved, proprietary (=expensive) ones, of course…) just to put my shreddings in. Which kind of defeats the point of recycling paper…
Yesterday was ‘paper collection day’ again, so I duly put out the rest of my waste paper, which I was careful to put in my newly-purchased brown paper sacks. But when I got back from work, they were still sat there on the driveway, with the now-familiar REJECTED sticker on them. Why?? What did I do this time? Did I mix my glossy magazines with my newsprint? Or include cardboard that was a couple of microns thicker than the secret limit, or neglect to take the staples out of the free circulars (which always go straight to recycling without even being opened). Or was it because I neglected to carefully strip the glue from the magazine spines with a craft knife??
Unfortunately, I can’t even go through the bags to check for clues as to my supposed crime. It had been raining all day (well, this is Belgium…) so all that was left was a pile of mush in the driveway. Which of course I’ll have to shovel up, and put in more paper sacks for next time – naturally, taking care to fish out the REJECTED sticker, as that is plastic-coated and I’m not going to fall into that particular trap again!
So, not so much a /’refju:s/ (n) collection service as a /’rifju:z/ (v) collection service…
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