Recycling Mania

 

I am a big recycler, I think it's extremely important to be aware of what you throw away and to try to limit what is left to rot and decompose in landfills which for a lot of things takes years, decades or longer. So I was excited that Kamiyama has a very strict recycling program, but I hadn't bargained on the effort it would entail. It felt great to actively separate everything but my oh my did we have a lot of bags laying about.

It started with composting. I was so excited as I've never done it. We had 6 bins in front on the houses, big green buggers. But one had a cracked lid that allowed flies in so we basically had a maggot farm. You could hear them from above and looking inside was a lesson in humility. There were creatures big and small, of different colors, and they broke down our food waste with vigor and velocity! The gross-out factor was pretty high. As was the fascination, the whole thing roiled and moved and actually thumped.

For the rest, we had bags for PET bottles, other plastic, paper, burnables, unburnables, cans, and glass. Cartons had to rinsed, cut open and flattened and tied together with special string. Baby diapers were separate as well but I didn't have the courage or strength to remove the feces so that shit literally stayed in there which was oh so anarchic of me. (Sorry Green Valley, hope you didn't get into any trouble.)

Keiko told me stories of the trash collectors leaving bags behind with notes saying things like "we didn't take your glass bag because you put a plastic bottle in it." Basically, sort it out and don't do it again or you will be fined. And since you have to put your name on all your bags, if you do it incorrectly they know exactly who committed the offenses. In this way, it's actually quite efficient, but I've never before had fear of trash offenses! A whole new intimidation factor.

Literally, everything had its rightful colored bag and had to be rinsed. (Let's not even go into the water used doing this.) There was more than a few occasions that I had to ask Keiko what to do with certain things, like rubber bands (which are fondly wrapped around a surprising amount of things), holding it between my fingers feeling like a moron. Also, the preservation packets of little chemical balls that are in most dry goods in Japan. And tie straps. And thumb tacks that have metal and plastic. I've never even thought about these little insignificant things before, and suddenly I was stumped about how to throw them away. It became a running joke, "what do I do with this?"

By the end, I was actually looking forward to not doing it so intensely anymore, it really took up more time in my day (and space in the house) than I ever would've anticipated and I came away struggling within myself: it was satisfying but irksome, how very odd for something I feel quite passionately about. I will always recycle paper, glass, batteries and now plastic (thanks gemeente Amsterdam for the new plastic container outside my grocery store) but until I live in a home that allows for 10 garbage cans with stench absorbers, that's all I can muster. And I'm ok with that.

Becky would bring Mani out to play and he loved sniffing around the compost bins, naturally Hopper followed. (And we always had to be on the lookout for snakes and Scolopendra centipedes!)