Italians and Trash

I expected to adjust to many new things with a move to a new country. Trash wasn’t one of them. My first clue about the importance of trash in Italy was that Monia devoted five minutes of my orientation to my apartment to a discussion of trash. The separation and disposal of trash, that is. Wanna guess how many options there are for discarding an item no longer wanted or needed? Would you believe five? Yes five, And that doesn’t include the large containers down the street devoted solely to the collection of glass.

I get it. Italy is a relatively small, ancient land with limited options for creating the rolling hills of landfills that border many roads in our large, sprawling country. Conscientious waste management is essential.

So back to my trashy story.

Here are my trash disposal options. I’ll start with what I thought was the simplest one- the brown compost bucket which sits outside my kitchen door. I’ve never composted but assumed it was the receptacle for all organic waste. At least that’s what I thought until the compost man rejected my compost. Turns out that not all organic material belongs in the brown bucket. For instance, the shriveled blossoms that litererd my terrace that I had neatly swept up and shoveled into that bucket. Nope. Not compostible. That rejection forced me to dig into (no pun intended) the heap of non-compostible things. Actually, its simpler just to list what is truly compostible- uncooked fruits, vegetables and egg shells. Now that I am a saavy composter, the compost man dutifully empties my bucket every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Okay, so what so you do with all the rest?

I decide if it is Plastica (blue bucket), Indifferentiziata ( green bucket), Carta (yellow)- that one really is easy- paper or cardboard, or its just trash and goes into the trash can!

With such a commitment to trash management you wont be surprised to learn that every day except Sunday a truck rolls down the ancient Via Chiantigiana and loads up whatever my neighbors and I have left at their doors.

Three of my many options for trash disposal

The good old trash can, for anything I can’t decide where else to put it!