RE: Green Waste Recycling: One Community Gets With The Program.
ha, now I finally get the time for a comment on your great post!!! and just look - almost hit the 90 mark!!!! I can see the grinning in your face --hahaha :-) ... The comment I wanted to leave when you first posted it was: here in Germany, in the region we live, there is something called "Sperrmüll" - this means, you can put all the big pieces (sofas, tables, chairs etc.) out onto the sidewalk/street in front of your house (there are special days for parts of the town) and then the garbage van will come and pick it up... I love those days - you can find me strolling around town, collecting all the things needed (baby bed, cradle, table, chairs, beds, planting pots, toys for the sandbox, bobbycars, etc....)... well, you can't no longer - I was stopped be the "Ordnungsamt" (they are part of the police, but not the police) lecturing be that what I was doing was theft...Because if people use the defined day to put out their Sperrmüll, it no longer belongs to them, they have thus handed it over into the "property" of the garbage-company... hahaha... they did not just lecture me, but many other "lovers of recycling"... so now you find more and more people putting the things they do not need out totally off the "given and defined day" for Sperrmüll of that part of town with a big sign saying "zum Mitnehmen" - which is "to be taken with".... meaning "for free" :-) ... so you find me walking my dog around town.... ;-) cheers and thanks for all of your post!!!
We don't have a defined day for that. People in town have blue containers filled with cardboard, bottles and other recyclables that they put out every week. If you put a sofa in front of your house the "code enforcers" (probably equivalent to your Ordnungsamt) would drop by to fine them for "an offense."
I live out, but not way out. When you live this far north on Turtle Island, towns are small and the countryside is big. Down the road a kilometer or so from me this guy set up a "garage sale." In town, you are supposed to apply for a permit to have a garage sale and then you can only have a couple a year. Out here you don't need a permit, so they have no way of knowing how many you've had. I'm sure what he did was illegal, though. David set up his garage sale in an old barn. He was open only on Fridays and Saturdays, but it was every single week. He'd spend the week going to other garage sales and taking away everything that didn't sell, usually for free and local people were always dropping by his garage sale with truckloads of reusable stuff. He always opened the first weekend in April and closed right after Halloween (0ct. 31). It was the only garage sale that I've been to that had more stuff at the end of the sale than it had at the beginning. If I needed something I didn't have, I'd go to the Garage Sale first because he probably had it for pennies on the dollar. That's where I got my cast iron wok and my steam juice extractor...for $5 each! David would recycle stuff that just didn't sell or give it to the thrift stores in town. He didn't make a lot of money (lots of stuff sold for dimes and quarters) but he had bad knees and a bad hip (from working hard labor his whole life) and was on disability (which isn't enough to live on), so the income helped him out and he was doing good work. I went every week, partly because I'm a bit of a bargain addict and partly because I wanted to support his efforts. Sadly, the owner of the property needed his barn to store his own junk (he is a hoarder for sure) so David had to close this year. I miss him. He had absolutely everything. Cash and carry and no tax. A real people's store.
Well, David did something really great - sustaining.... just now realized the meaning of Turtle Island... ;-) if you are more or less in the middle with some great lakes close by, please hand over a loving and longing (sometimes almost kinda "homesick") greeting to the land and living...
oh, wow - look, just ran into this :-) you are on their list...;-) well done!!!! https://steemit.com/curation/@curie/curie-weekly-update-17th-september-to-24th-september-2017