Garbage Collection

[soh]

In my town we have 3 categories. Each category is collected once a week.

- Burnable garbage - food scraps, tissue, disposable chopsticks, toothpicks, cotton swabs and small pieces of paper (in case there's confidential information)

- Recyclables
*Paper garbage - paper packaging, any paper material with the 紙 label
*Plastic garbage - food packaging, shopping bags, plastic wrap, with the プラ label
*Milk and juice cartons with the 紙パックlabel, cut, wash, dry and bundle
*Metal cans - from canned food, coffee, beer etc.
*Pet bottles (without the plastic tag and cap) and glass bottles
*Magazines and books
*Cardboard

- General garbage - aluminum foil, old clothes, dish sponges, broken dishes and other things that don't belong...

There's a poster with the day of collection and what kind of garbage goes in which bag on my wall. There's also a more detailed book that lists a lot of things.

[word]

My old village did lightbulbs and batteries once a year. Good times.

[Shincantsen]

It should be noted that this is the sole purpose of old ladies in Japan.

They're also an important part of the local "pushing you out of the way at the train station" ecosystem.

[zombiekelly]

My town was a little different, we had large trash once a month and you didn't have to pay extra so long as it wasn't a TV/PC or aircon. Burnable was twice a week, with bottles, cans, and non-burn staggering the rest of the month. But since my place was a leopalace, garbage usually ended up separated into burnable and beer cans.

[Kamirose]

What I actually do is just throw out burnable, nonburnable, and cardboard normally, and the rest I take to the recycling bins at my grocery store.

What my city actually offers, though:
* Burnables: twice a week (we don't have separate plastic recycling, so that goes in with the burnables unless it's hard plastic, which is nonburnable)
* Nonburnables: Once a month
* Glass bottles/jars: Once every two weeks
* Cardboard: Once every two weeks
* Steel cans: Once every two weeks
* PET bottles: A mystery. We don't have a day for them on our trash schedule, but if you put them out they will mysteriously be taken away at some point.

[teckset]

In short, your garbage/recycling guidelines will be different depending on where you live. Your best bet is to get a bunbetsuhyou (separation guidelines) sheet from your local town/city/whatever office and read through it. It should have information on what goes into what bag, what bags are available, and what has to be taken to Recycling Centers.

Ask someone (your Supervisor, your Predecessor, your Landlord) where you place your recycling.

Be aware that each place will have a different set of recycling bags and you will have to get them from your local grocery stores. I've heard some places require you to sign your recycle bags before you set them out, but that's not the case where I live, so YMMV.

Old ladies are a good resource on how to sort tricky items. Good luck and hopefully you'll never get one of those annoying "You did it wrong, idiot!" stickers on your returned recycling bag.

[Lianwen]

You might not even have a recycling bag, but a bin. Old thread is older, but, I'm throwing this out there. My area, cans and bottles are sorted into blue egg crates and left out at the same corner where other trash is thrown, once a month. It goes out in the morning, the guys come, empty them into their truck, and leave them there and then you collect yours at the end of the day. No one really labels theirs, so you can take any which one. It's nice, because a lot of vending machines in the area have a crate next to them and people leave theirs outside.

[coop52]

My city also is supposed to use crates, but my apartment building doesn't have them. I just shove everything that isn't burnable or plastic into separate plastic bags and chuck it in the garbage holder.

I've also never seen garbage being sent back for being wrong. My area could just be really chill about it though.

[tealparadise]

My area is really chill because there's a conveniently placed forest surrounding us. So if they weren't relaxed about it..... people would just dump in the woods. It's still quite the problem.

I don't see anyone mentioning what I find to be the REAL problem, so I'll skip telling you what all my pickups are and get to the meat of it.


You can put out trash from 7-8AM. It is picked up at 8AM on the dot.

You need to leave for work before 7AM? Fuck you. Why don't you have a housewife to put out your garbage?

You didn't realize "big garbage" day was coming? Fuck you, you had to pre-pay by last Wednesday. NO you can't just put it out day-of! What do you think we are, animals? Wait until next November.

You want to just take it to the dump? Dump's open from 8 to 4:30. You work until 5? Fuck you.


(at the burnables dump) "This is non-burnable."
(at the non-burnables dump) "This is burnable."

GAAAHHHHHHH.


My hometown didn't even recycle. We just shipped all our trash to China. I'm not even kidding.


When I get back, I'm going to send vids to all my friends of me throwing out broken glass, food scraps, plastic bottles, and styrofoam trays, into the same bag, at 6pm.

[Jiggit]

Aye, there's the rub.

For me it's only being able to do recyclables on monday morning...

[zombiekelly]

That's one of the few advantages of living in a leopalace- there usually isn't anyone to catch you breaking da rules.

[johnny]

It seems like my city is better than most. Burnables go out twice a week and soft plastics once a week. Hard plastics, pet bottles, cans and glass go out twice a month.

Electronics, large burnables and other stuff goes out once a month.

[Page]

Once you find out your city you should be able to go to your city website and find information about trash removal (after searching an hour on their poorly organized POS website). Hope you read Japanese though because lol English and it's probably a file that you can't quickly google translate.

[Ini]

cities normally have the information available in english if you go to the city hall and ask around. In towns and villages you are probably on your own and will have to translate the japanese version.

[word]

My city isn't really all that big and it has trash schedules and guides available in English, Portuguese, Chinese, and Korean. They're not advertised and most Japanese people don't even know about them, but it might be worth asking about it at your town hall.

Edit: derp; too slow. What Ini said. My inaka village had nothing but Japanese docs.

[coop52]

My BOE supervisor was smart and had trash charts waiting for us when we got here, along with a couple of each kind of the special trash bags.

[Shincantsen]

If your city only has glass recycling once a month, like mine did, you can look forward to feeling like an alcoholic in front of all the neighborhood old ladies.