The garbage system in Johannesburg is not very good! There are not many people who sort their rubbish and recycle in the same way that other cities encourage! For example, we only separate our paper from the rest of our rubbish. All paper products go into an orange bag and are left for collection by Ronnie every second Thursday. Ronnie ONLY takes paper / cardboard. The rest of our rubbish goes into black bags andinto wheelie bins, which are collected on Tuesday mornings. We're NOT conscious about sorting our rubbish, we don't have recycling rules to adhere to, so it's just not part of our routine. I must say that I am not proud of this fact, but it's the truth.
Coming to work this morning, I passed a complex of town houses where about 20 wheelie bins were standing on the pavement, waiting for collection. Amongst the bins, were two homeless men, going through the wheelie bins. Now normally, this would be annoying, because most of these people take out what they might find useful and make a mess of the rest. These two men, however, were carefully sorting out the rubbish – plastic in one pile, paper in another, glass bottles stacked neatly next to each other and general rubbish – back in the bag. Now, besides the fact that I could not believe my eyes, I do hope that these two homeless are rewarded for their work this morning! I hope they had to foresight to take their wares to a recycling company and perhaps, in this way, earn a small income. No matter how meagre it might be!
Countries like Japan have advanced systems when it comes to recycling, and I'm sure that no matter how difficult the procedure, all it takes is a little practice. And once you're used to it, it will be second nature and everyone will benefit. I guess there needs to be a monitoring program – if you don't sort your garbage, it won't be removed – shouldn't take too long for us to get the idea! What have we got to lose? But boy, we all have plenty to gain!
Blue for non-burnable, red for burnable and green for recyclable
Taken from - macinger84. (2010). Apple Bazaar Blog. Japan Garbage System. http://store.applebazaar.com/blog/2010/01/09/japan-garbage-system/
4 comments:
South Africa is catching on. When I moved here 7 years ago I struggled to fall into their system of a paper bin, a plastic bin and a garbage (food stuff and plants ) bin. Bottles are recycled.....you take them back to the store and get money for it.....so no bottled get put into bins, then we have glass bins....for clear, brown and blue glass.
We have a recycling system that works out well. We have two different bins...one for garbage and the other for recycling...paper, plastic, tin, aluminum, etc.
Oh and I LOVE the post singing in the rain...sweet smiles.
Unfortunately if you want to recycle in PE you need to pay a company to come and fetch the sorted rubbish. I don't have money to spend on this lkike that unfortunately
I am happy to report that in Pretoria we have a great recycling company that picks up all recyclables in one clear big bag. You can put almost anything in there as long as its' clean and dry apart for black polystyrene for some reason. You should see how empty our main bin is.
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