Arguement with a previous guest

[la vache!]

Our commune has just started a re-cycle collection for paper & plastic next to the communal bin too. The only problem is that instead of collecting the rubbish weekly on a Monday, they seem to be taking the recyclable stuff one week and the rubbish the next week and the bins are overflowing already - it looks terrible. You still have to take your bottles to the town bins though, it doesn't seem to have been a very well thought out scheme. Do you find that many people recycle?

[Hells Bells]

We have communal bins for the copropriété at the bottom of the driveway, and a bon for recycling plastics and containers. Glass recycling is across the road in the car park.

[Ju]

Susan, We have this problem at one of our properties. Our properties are in different communes, one commune collects household waste weekly and recycling once a fortnight. The other have decided, in their infinite wisdom, to collect waste one week and recycling the next. This leaves rubbish hanging around for two weeks, not pleasant in the summer.

We do find that the guests are more than happy to recycle.

Ju

[Hells Bells]

Maybe it's because we're actually in a 'resort' our bins get emptied about twice weekly, and the recycling weekly.

[Normandy Cow]

I did wonder whether we should offer to take our guests' recycling to the dechetterie as it is a fair distance away and whether to perhaps have a separate bin away from the gite that they can put everything recyclable in. Does anyone else do this?

This is exactly what we do!

Our rubbish gets picked up once a week from the end of our lane. We have a chicken-wire enclosure into which we used to ask guests to deposit their rubbish, but no matter what we did they used to get broken into by local foxes/dogs and other wildlife and the rubbish would get strewn all over the road. Yuk.

We then bought a sturdy black dustbin to put the rubbish in but within a week the whole bin itself got stolen (yes really!).

So now, we have 3 large bins in one of the dependances. One for bottles, one for plastics, and one for rubbish. Every saturday our caretaker just takes the lot off down to the dump and recycling bins.

[la vache!]

Ju,
thanks for the info on your commune - I'm going to complain to the Mairie this week (for what it is worth!). This system has just started - I can understand the logic behind it, but maybe they didn't take into account the people who actually recycled before (like me), by taking their stuff to the bins in town, who now just put it out for collection instead, as instructed by the waste disposal company. Therefore the volume for collection has increased. As you say, in the summer, the stench is dreadful and it looks awful too.

[Fraise]

This system is pretty common in the UK. Where we are are rubbish gets taken weekly and some recycling fortnightly ( cans, bottles, paper and garden rubbish). They won't take boxes or plastics of any form. A few miles down the road the system is one week rubbish, the next week recycling, like you say, smelly and messy!!

[kteee]

Here in the algarve there are no house-to-house collections, we take our rubbish to large, communal bins on a daily basis.

Our closest one is just across the road, and it is emptied daily - which is just as well, given the summer temperatures we get!

There are paper, glass and recycling bins at various points in the village, which are probably only emptied weekly.

[Alan Knighting]

Dear All,

On balance I prefer the system in rural France. One is never more than a few hundred yards from the nearest poubelle which normally has “general� and “plastics� bins. For those who are more into re-cycling the local dechetterie is never more than two or three miles away and sorts rubbish into all sorts of unimaginable categories.

I contrast that with the system we left behind us in the UK. Just as we were leaving, the local authority adopted a wheelie-bin system. We were all issued with a wheelie-bin and informed that no household would be allowed to produce more waste than a wheelie-bin could contain – on sufferance of death. That was bad enough but, on a windy day, the whole bloody lot finished up at one end of the back lane and the local authority refused to clear up the mess. To cap it off, the new lorries were too small to contain the allowed “standard� amount of waste and the team of two rather six couldn’t handle it anyway which resulted in the whole system collapsing.

No thank you, I’d much rather have the poubelle and the dechetterie even though it means (shudder, shudder) I’ve got to do “something for myself�.

Alan

[Marion]

Here on the cote d'azur we have rubbish collected every night except Sat and Weds. On Weds they collect the recycled stuff. For bottles and paper there is a bin at the end of the road. Quite amazing really.

Marion

[Hanorah]

Our rubbish in Turkey is collected daily and there are recycling bins available for bottles paper etc at the end of our road. Bottles can be returned directly to shops and you get a small fee much like here years ago. I too am really amazed that this service is offered daily especially as the equivalent to council tax we pay over there is a pittance.

[Hells Bells]

When we went to Canada last year, the empty bottles were returned to the local liquor store, and you got a refund on them.

[gh]

I'm happy to take our bags of rubbish 300mtrs,our caretaker is v.good he takes guests rubbish away daily, the stench would be unbearable, imagine seafood shells left for a week or more in the heat ugh, flies and ants would have a veritable feast. Worse still babies nappies left......

And the taxes are a pittance, 1 yr in France = 2 mths in UK for us in France profond.

[A-two]

Our property taxes are 10 times what we paid in the UK, and don't even include municipal trash removal. There isn't any. Everyone has to take care of their own.

The Town dump is quite the social gathering place I hear, but I refuse to do it. They will not accept anything that is not in an official yellow bag which the town sells for $3 bucks each and is the size of a black dustbin liner. We provide these for guests free of charge and on top of that, pay a private contractor to empty the garbage cans at the house twice a week.

Recycling needs a whole speech to explain and the eyes glaze over well before that has sunk in, so we give our guests a pass, and just ask them to put all recyclables together in one garbage can, which we take away personally on changeover day. If we're lucky, we then con a passing teenager into taking it to the local shopping complex where it's separated into various machines, which crush the cans and count the 5 cent refunds, returning a paper receipt. This can be taken to the supermarket and cashed and used as poker money, or to buy other teenage essentials, such as hair dye or earrings.

Since we're paying through the nose anyway, we have the private contractor swing by at our convenience early Saturday morning, which is changeover day, then again Tuesday, so every guest has fresh cans that have been emptied and rinsed with a new yellow bag.

At home, I put seafood shells and chicken bones in plastic bags in the freezer until the night before the trash is picked up, but I don't think I would recommend that for nappies!

[enid]

Thanks Joanna - that makes a trip to the end of the road seem even more of a doddle!