The Garbage Police

All right, all right, I know that the title of this section is not politically correct, but there is no better way to describe life here.  The good news is that Switzerland has one of the highest rates of recyling in the world, but the bad news is that they go to extremes to make sure that you are cooperating fully.  Over 90% of recycleable goods are returned, and that figure includes EVERYTHING you can think of, and many things that you never imagined could be recycled.  Here is our new recycling list and rules, posted for daily reference. 

Ok, we have the typical newspaper, magazines, and cardboard, which must be broken down to folded newspaper sized bundles, no more than 25 cm thick, and secured with special non-plastic twine.  No big deal, right?  Wrong.  A expat friend was taking her recycleables to the appropriate area, when it was discovered by the garbage police that she had accidentally enclosed a magazine with her cardboard bundle (I can hear the audible gasp across the Atlantic!)  That is an automatic $500 fine.  Allow your glass to go into the recycle bin and make a noise 1 minute before it is allowed?  $150 fine.  The garbage police will go through your bags, making sure everything is properly disposed of.  If they catch a "bad bag", they will search through the bag, to get clues to your identity to fine you. 

Some of the things that must be recycled include:

Tin cans, rinsed, dried, tops and bottoms cut out, and crushed flat:

Batteries, returned to the store which sells them
Any ceramic ware, drinking glasses
Cooking oil, used
Fluorescent and halogen bulbs
Broken electronics, returned to the store which sells them (guess this doesn't include our US Wii which we fried the first day)
Styrofoam
All plastic beverage containers, rinsed, never crushed, and returned to the store (they are washed, filled back up, and put back on the shelves!)
Any metal, old furniture, old clothes,
Any vegetable matter, including table scraps

All garbage drawers have a built in compost bin, in which all your vegetable matter, scraps, peelings, egg shells, etc. are placed.  Once it is good and rancid, you take it to your neighborhood compost bin pile, where the community will generate good soil for use.  We are lucky to have a large yard and our own compost pile, rich with fertilizer for my new rose garden.

There are strict rules on what can go in the neighborhood compost, nothing more than 2 cm long, so you see people on the side of the road with scissors and clippers, cutting the banana peels and branches into the correct size.

All this recyling has led to an interesting phenomenon.  The Swiss hate extra packaging.  There are large bins at the front of the store where you can throw boxes, styrofoam inserts, plastic wrapping or whatever may be protecting your new trinket.  The first time I saw people "debulking" their purchases, I was reminded of the chaos at Bloomingdales the day after Christmas.  Everything is packaged differently here.  There are no boxes on the cereals, meats are in bags, not styrofoam plates, so the presentation at the grocery store is very different.  

There are a few things here that are not recycleable.  Plastic bags for one.  Apparently the energy it takes to chew them up and reprocess them is not worth the recyling.  Cardboard with any waxy, waterproof coating is also rejected.  So what do you do with the few things that are not being recycled you ask?  We have rubbish collection, once a week, and you pay by the bag-full.  Literally you must put your garbage in a canton (town) approved garbage bag, and you pay $2.00/bag.  You would be amazed at how much stuff you can crush in a 35L bag (slightly smaller than one "tall garbage bag" in the US).  We can get away with one bag a week now.  Here is all the neighborhood garbage for one week:

So far we have managed to avoid the garbage police, but our adventure is just beginning...