Rubbish (aka. Garbage) - Edinburgh, Scotland

*** This is the first of many posts from Edinburgh as I moved house. Still commute the 50 miles to work on the other side of the country so I spend just as much time in Glasgow. Most of my posts will come from Edinburgh now but occassionally from Glasgow. Mostly things are the same in the East and West but there are still a million differences. ***

This is my garbage, or as we Scots call it, rubbish. We had to wait a while to get these containers as our new house was newly built and the council weren't forward-sighted enough to supply them. Anyway, here we finally have a photo. Jen, and indeed all our readers out there, I can't apologise enough for the delay. Moving house was crazy and although I've had this photo for a while I'm notoriously bad at updating. Luckily I now have a stash of photos so hopefully there should be no further delays.

In this photo we have a selection of recycling and rubbish containers:

- blue box (with shower cap style cover) for cans, tins, glass jars and bottles;

- blue bag for paper;

- red box (with shower cap style cover) for cardboard;

- charity bag for clothes, textiles, sheets etc;

- green wheelie bin for rubbish.

There are currently no collections for plastic recycling so we just take them to our local public site - 2 minutes down the street.

Most houses also have a big brown wheelie bin for garden waste (grass cuttings, weeds etc) but we're still waiting on ours. When we lived in Glasgow we were in the East Renfrewshire district and they were piloting compost bins which looked like a mini green wheelie bin. If we had to have that as well as all of these there's be no room in the garage or driveway for our car!!

Btw you'll notice how insanely clean these all are... at this point they were totally unused lol.

Garbage - Burlington, Ontario, Canada

I've decided to take pictures of more stuff around the house. Not only is it more convenient for me, but I think it's these sort of quirky things that are really different, and won't be found in any guidebook.

Anyway. The green bin on the left is appropriately called the "green bin". This is where you put most of what I would consider gross garbage: chicken bones, eggshells, used kleenexes, rotting fruit, something you found in your fridge that is no longer identifiable due to large amounts of mold. Every week it gets taken away and turned into compost (supposedly).

The blue box in the middle is, you guessed it, the "blue box" or "recycling bin". Here's where you put all your newspapers, cardboard, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, etc. It also gets taken away weekly to be turned into, well, newspapers, cardboard, plastic bottles, aluminum cans, etc.

The garbage can on the right is for everything else. I know, you're thinking, what else is there? Plenty, let me tell you. Especially if have two kids in diapers and you live in a municipality that doesn't allow diapers in the green bin even though the enormous megacity just 50 km away (Toronto) does allow diapers in the green bin (which baffles me). This would be fine except that, unlike the green and blue bins, the regular garbage gets picked up every two weeks (part of the local government's plan to get people all gung-ho about recycling). Two weeks is way too long to have festering toddler poop sitting around, imo. I mean I'm all for helping the environment, but seriously.

You're it, Carol!