Hard, Green Waste and Metal Collection Day

Once a year, in late winter, the City Councils around Melbourne initiate the collection of what I call burdening garbage. It’s old furniture, computers, tree prunings and home appliances that one has no longer use for and cannot just get rid of in the regular trash bins. People are required to sort this waste in three categories, hard, green waste and metal and pile it up on the “naturestrip,” which is the 1.5-2 meter grass strip between the sidewalk and the road. So for one week, suburbs look messy, but the idea is great. It’s the town-size version of the spring house cleaning. What I like the most is to look at the piles of trash and guess what kind of people owned it. For example, I still see the old, oversized TV sets like the one I grew up with back in Romania… I see wheelbarrows, vinyl covered kitchen furniture and so much old stuff, it confirms my feeling that everything here is from the nineteen fifties and slowly (very slowly) being updated. This trash cannot be disposed of more than a week before the one-week collection starts, so that week buzzes with activity. Some people put the waste out and others recycle stuff before the waste management company comes to pick up most of it. I like this idea, as recycling reduces the amount of trash, thus showing some kindness to the environment, and it allows some people to make ends meet. But the City Council calls this recycling “scavenging” and considers it an offence under local law. It even prosecutes offenders and asks residents to report offenders. I find this disappointing and hard to comply with. The picture shows how my street looks like today.