Anyway, I had barely walked through the door to our new home when Rich handed me a stack of papers explaining the trash system and said, "Enjoy!" You can't really tell from the pictures, but the colored pamphlet is 6 pages long and is quite user friendly since it's in color and has pictures. The other one, which is 5 pages long (front and back), is more comprehensive in listing items and identifying which category they belong to. I studied both of them very carefully and thought to myself, this is going to be interesting!
- Burnables (food scraps, some paper products) - picked up on Mondays and Thursdays
- Group resources (cardboard, clothes, magazines, toilet paper rolls) - picked up the 2nd and 4th Monday of every month
- Plastics - picked up on Tuesdays
- Nonburnables - picked upon the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month
- Cans, bottles and PET bottles - picked up on Fridays
You're probably wondering why you should care about sorting your trash properly. You don't have to, but if you don't, the trash collectors will leave your trash there with a preprinted Yellow Note identifying your trash violation. How do they know if you've gotten it right or not? Everyone is required to use clear (or opaque) trash bags which clearly show what's in the bag - talk about no privacy. Having heard of how strict the Japanese are about trash and living in constant fear of the shame of getting a Yellow Note, I probably checked the pamphlets any time I had to throw something away for the entire first month we lived here.
As the months passed with no incident, I think we got a little complacent with our trash sorting habits. Well, after living here for 7 months without any issues, we got our first Yellow Notice the other day. And apparently they knew the violators were not Japanese because as you can see, the Yellow Note is in English not in Japanese like the others we have seen. It seems we have been incorrectly putting non-PET water bottles in the plastics when they should be going in the cans, bottles and PET group. Luckily this wasn't such a hard violation to correct (I say this, but Rich is the one that had to go through the bag and re-sort it) but the crappy thing is that we had to keep it for another week. With the exception of this incident, I'm pleased to say that we've pretty much gotten the hang of the sorting and hey, I may even miss it when we leave here.
1 comment:
BEST POST, Shanners! I read it to Curt because I knew it would resonate with him...AS I ALREADY DO ALL THOSE THINGS!
When you said "clear trash bags," I told him "Brilliant idea!"
You really had me at the 6 page instruction manual on recycling. <3!
I will fit in perfectly when I visit. = )P
LOVES!
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