Swiss Favorite Pastime: Recycling

No this isn't a silo or a time capsule, this is a green glass recycling container. Oh my.

The Swiss take recycling to a whole new level, and I am still trying to figure out the ins and outs. For starts, they recycle EVERYTHING. I almost feel bad if I don't pick apart my yogurt containers and recycle the aluminum lids and plastic separately. I know, I need to do my part to 'go green' so I'm trying my best to learn where it all goes.

For the first time this week, I also noticed that there are community compost bins, where you can take your food waste to be composted for the good of the community. You remember that green goodness in the soil that I talked about, that makes such delicious strawberries - must be the community compost.

The city's list of recyclables is so long that it folds out into 16 pages. Ok, so maybe it's not that big, but when you have rules and drop-off locations and schedules for recycling the following, there's bound to be a lot of details.

The Swiss recycle (or have disposal instructions for) the following:

• Paper and cardboard - paper gets bundled up monthly and collected, there are containers for cardboard, but for God's sake, people, please flatten your boxes.
• Compost - this is genius - take your old banana peels and apple cores to the community compost -GENIUS! I wish I knew what they did with that stuff.
• PET bottles - these go back to the store, look for the PET containers either outside or near the beverages.
  
• Glass - there are containers for green, brown, and clear glass
• Tins - usually containers for tin cans are next to the glass containers.
• Regular household waste - goes in the 'saecke' that you buy from the supermarket or post office, some regions use stickers instead. They're so tiny - why, because you're supposed to recycle, silly, that's why!
• Other - For the rest of it all, there are places to take your old oil, batteries, Styrofoam, electronics, poison (?), textiles, and even cadavers (oh my! - I think it's just animals though - like your pets... hummm....)
  

Now good luck finding where to recycle everything - again I found a recycling map on Google Maps which I posted about yesterday. This is really helpful for general, everyday recycling.

Here's what the containers look like in my neighborhood.

This left one says 'Please only city garbage bags' and the other is for compost.

'Please only compost'

Only cardboard - and for goodness sakes please flatten those boxes!

Glass (green, white and brown) and tin cans

Now if only Jace would drink less Diet Coke! All the back and forth to recycle those coke bottles is killing me.. Where's the Granny Trolly when you need it? Oh, here it is...

I age at least 40 years when I carry this around, but I don't really care. I need it.