Recycling 1

Before moving to Switzerland I tended to think I am protecting nature by not littering and recycling paper, glass and tins. Now that I live in Switzerland though I realize there is room for improvement.

On one hand it's very easy to recycle here as simply that's the way and on the other hand it is made really easy. In Amsterdam or the center where I lived at least it was more difficult especially when you have a bike on which you are supposed to carry the garbage to the recycling place.

Switzerland definitely mastered recycling. People on average recycle more than 70% of their garbage and this is what we have been doing as well. As we know Switzerland is an expensive country and so is having household garbage. You can only put your household garbage out in a certain bag that is purchased at certain supermarkets. If you do any other way, you can be fined as much as 10,000 CHF. Yes, ten thousand franks. Households do not pay any yearly or monthly fee as in other countries so the amount of disposal comes from the garbage bag. You pay as much garbage you have. This is one of the reasons people choose to recycle, which is actually (mostly) free.

So, when moved here this was one of the first projects we had to figure out. Where to put the garbage... I know it sounds silly but it's indeed an important project.
First of all, we collect compost, plastic, paper, carton, aluminum, white glass, brown glass, green glass, PET, milk bottles, batteries and other things that we want to get rid of (such as a broken mop for instance) separately and we do not drop them into household garbage. The question is now where to collect these as you basically need a separate container for each and the IKEA ones are really not that nice to keep 5 of them at least in the kitchen. I already have some idea how to store them but until I manage to find what I have in mind we only have a corner with a couple of baskets and bags. Not that nice but it's for a good cause, right?