Tax plastic bags instead of boats in Greece!

[vyv_cox]

If your plastic bag free then what do you put your rubbish in? I suppose you have to go to the supermarket and buy some plastic bags - isn't that the same place that used to give them to you free?

You need a degree in waste management to cope with rubbish now. We have three large bins, three smaller ones and two bags that need to be put out for collection according to a strict timetable. We have biodegradable bags for food, ordinary plastic ones for rubbish, although we are still working through the one we were given for free before the current regime was introduced.

 

[chinita]

Yep; apologies to the OP.

 

[BrianH]

You need a degree in waste management to cope with rubbish now. We have three large bins, three smaller ones and two bags that need to be put out for collection according to a strict timetable. We have biodegradable bags for food, ordinary plastic ones for rubbish, although we are still working through the one we were given for free before the current regime was introduced.

Here in Switzerland we have to buy (taxed) marked bags for household rubbish. Collection is only from community bins central to a group of housing or apartment buildings. Anything not in the official bag is investigated by a forensic department to identify the originator (addressed envelopes or other incriminating details) - a heavy fine will follow.

Everything else has to be transported to neighbourhood deposit areas where:
- paper must be stacked in compatible bundles and bound before being deposited in central paper bins
- glass must be separated into their colours and deposited into their separate glass bins
- PET bottles must be deposited in separate bins after compression to pass through a narrow slot
- aluminium cans must be fed into a feeder input to the bins and an Archimedean screw handle rotated until the compressed cans fall into the bin.

I could go on about the larger items that must be taken to a handling centre and paid for being accepted - except for electrical items, for which their disposal costs are added to their purchase price - but it becomes too complicated.

 

[Steve C Cronin]

But then everyone would have to go and buy long-life bin bags instead of using old plastic carrier bags in their bins and we'd be back to square one. Now if someone could invent a bag that lasts a few months and then turns to dust that'd be much better as surely a few weeks in far too short a shelf life - then you could leave a pack on board happy that you'll always have a bin bag available and happy because it bio-degrades once you've finished with it. Now why didn't I pay more attention in chemistry? If I had then this time next year I could be a millionaire.

My neighbour and good friend is the sales manager for this country's largest bag manufacturers and he tells me that such a "delayed" degradable product IS available and since the advent of the J I T distribution system, these are now acceptable to retailers whereas before, they were reluctant to fill their warehouses with time restricted stock. Incidentally, the bio-degradation process doesn't begin until the plastic is stressed in some way which breaches the microscopic protective surface layer.

 

[Steve C Cronin]

If I had a pound for every time I find out something already exists just after I've invented it I'd be a very rich man.

Can't really see the just in time thing working very well here in Greece though. I've just come back from Carrefour where I was hoping to buy a fresh chicken for our Sunday dinner but they'd sold out. Beans on toast it is again then.

I did manage to pick up some free plastic bin bags while I was there though.

AB do a wonderful ready fresh-roast chicken and they will sell you a half too.

 

[BrianH]

Wow. I'm so glad that I no longer live in the real world! I like my simple multi-use plastic bag given away free by every shop in town.
[ ... snip ...]
Why do us humans try to make life so complicated?

When I move onto the boat in Italy for the summer it does seem a relief to revert to the simple life - supermarket plastic bag for the rubbish all dumped in together. But then I remember that sea of plastic bags in the Otranto Straits (mentioned above) and know it is wrong and the Swiss way, with all its annoyances and overhead costs, is the only solution to our overpopulated, overpackaging, throwaway, wasteful society. Anything else is a cop-out and an insult to our children who have to inherit our sh!t-house world.

 

[vyv_cox]

Have people become so stupid that they need to be told how to do everything and to be educated with punishment if they don't do it exactly the right way?

Yes. I live on a rural A-road in a house pretty much surrounded by fields. Every week I walk down the grass verge opposite picking up the rubbish that people have thrown out of their car windows. We seem to be at a critical distance from junk food outlets in the area, a lot of the discards being MacDonalds boxes and bottles, but there is a good representation of other products. The people who dump their junk here are supposedly well educated in a sophisticated society.