I guess it depends on how much soda or beer they drink, but, yeah, I see people with bags and boxes full of cans pretty much every time I go to the store. It’s pretty disgusting and dirty, because old smelly beer and old, sticky soda-pop everywhere.
Let me start out by “when I was a kid”. We had three collections, for trash (dry), garbage (wet), and ashes. The last was a major production involving a small truck carrying a bin until it filled, then going to a central location where a crane lifted the full bin onto a larger truck that held three bins (and drove off somewhere when full) and lifted an empty bin onto the small truck.
Now I live in a suburb of Montreal. They started recycling in a small way at least 20 years ago. We got blue bins divided into three compartments that we were told to separate paper, glass, and plastic/metal. Then I noticed that they were just emptying the bin into one compartment and when one of the dividers broke I removed the other divider and stopped separating them. Then maybe ten years ago, the town provided us all with large green wheeled bins that were for garden waste (including branches up to 2.54 cm diameter–yeah, one inch). They collected this every week from mid-April till mid-Nov. Meantime, the blue bins were replaced by blue wheeled bins. The two wheeled bins are collected by trucks that send out a pseudopod that grabs the bin in the middle, lifts, and shakes it into the waste chamber. About two years ago, we got little brown wheeled bins (but even my 5’2" wife cannot actually wheel it except in an uncomfortable crouch and I just lift it by the handle) that are supposed to hold compostable waste. We put all the kitchen waste into compostable (different from biodegradable) plastic bags. During the months from mid-April to mid-Nov, we can put the kitchen either into the brown bin or the green bin, but they will collect only one of the them. During the winter months only the brown bin will be collected. I have to be careful not to put bin out all night when it is freezing since the compostable bags are not really waterproof and the garbage freezes and will not empty completely. In addition, there is a regular collection for ordinary trash. So three trucks come around every Wednesday: trash, recyclables, and compostables. This happens even if, say, Christmas is on a Wednesday.
Twice a year, the Town has a “Dangerous waste collection” at a central location to which you can bring virtually anything. Also you can bring dead batteries any time to a box at the hockey rink. In addition, there is a recycling center in the city to which you can bring anything at any time (but you can go there only twice a year).
I live in Southern Maryland. Trash pickup is paid for by my HOA fees. They come Mondays and Thursdays and will collect anything that is in a bag and they will also collect any broken down cardboard boxes - but nothing that’s not in a bag will be collected.
The 2nd Saturday of every month, they do bulk pickup. Which means anything that you can haul out to the curb. Surprisingly, on those days, they WON’T take anything that is in a trash bag.
I had a recycling can, but I never used it. I had to take it to the local dump to get rid of it (the recycling can, since it was big and took up too much space in my shed)
Close Maryland suburb of DC (Prince George’s County). For all unincorporated areas, which we are in, the county has provided every house with 2 64-gallon wheeled trash cans, one for recycling, the other for general trash. You can request additional receptacles, for a fee. They are both collected the same morning, once a week. Yard waste is collected on a different morning, once a week. Bulky items will be picked up, but you have to call and request a large item pickup. Everything is paid by taxes and run by the county government.
If we were in the nearby city whose ZIP code we share, it would be identical, only run by the city government.
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Upper Midwest.
The city contracts trash collection out to several companies. The one I use collects trash once a week, recyclables (which all go into a different cart - glass, aluminum, paper) every other week, and yard waste once a week in the summer. There is a recycling center that accepts electronics, paint, oil, etc. but you have to transport the stuff yourself. They have recycling events every so often for a fee, or occasionally for free.
I wish they did recycling pickup every week - the bin is always almost overflowing with paper and cardboard.
Various organizations - The Lupus Foundation, Disabled American Vets, others - are always asking me for used clothes and household goods, which they will pick up if I leave them out and label them.
Spring is here - I think it’s time for another clean-out.
Regards,
Shodan
Burlington County, NJ, USA
We have trash/garbage collection every week. Used to be collected twice a week during the summer, but I think that has been discontinued. The Township pays for it from our property taxes. There is no standardized trash bin - people just use whatever they have.
Recycling is picked up every other week, and handled by the County. All recyclables are mixed in the same bin, which is provided free by the County. You can get extra bins if you need them. This is paid for from our county taxes, though I believe the proceeds from selling the recyclables pays for a significant portion of the operating expenses.
We do not have any sort of collection for food scraps - stuff like that just goes out with the trash.
I believe our garbage men are not supposed to collect bagged grass clipping or leaves. Leaves are collected from curbside sometime during Autumn. Other yard waste such as tree branches and such, are collected, but not on a set schedule. You just put that stuff on the curb, and it eventually gets picked up.
Chicago suburbia, though I live in a small pocket of unincorporated land
Trash collection is private and there’s two competing providers. I think you actually pay extra to recycle; I only see a few houses with bins and we just dump it all in the trash. They’ll take most large items aside from old CRT television sets which no one ever seems to understand and some 1979 console TV languishes in front of some jackass’s house for five weeks until, I don’t know, pixies spirit it away or something. No one wants your shitty ancient television, people, and looking at a curbside TV sitting in the rain with a “TV WORKS” sign in bleeding magic marker taped to the front is just sad. But I digress.
Anything else either gets picked up or the scrappers take it away. There’s probably some restricted item list but it all falls under “Throw a bag of kitchen waste on top of it and no one will notice”. These days the garbage men don’t even leave the truck – some arm on the side of the truck grabs and lifts the bins and dumps them. You could probably throw a body away and no one would notice, much less a couple of paint cans. They charge to collect yard waste but, since we’re unincorporated, most people with any significant pile of brush just burn it. We used to all burn our leaves but the township finally coughed up to have the curb-side trucks come vacuum it up rather than have us annoy everyone three blocks over in proper civilization with our wall of smoke. These days I keep an old metal garbage can in the back yard for burning sticks that blew off over the winter and some of the spring clean-up debris.
Pretty much this around here. Black wheeled bin for the garbage, blue one for recycling and a green one for lawn trimmings and garden waste. Picked up every Tuesday morning.
Let me just talk for a moment about the hardship and pain of trash and recycling in the town I used to live in. Unless you had private service, you brought everything to the transfer station. You had to pay $4+ for one sticker for one bag of garbage. You could pack it pretty full and heavy but there was a limit. You had to get the stickers at town hall or the village store.
The transfer station was only open Saturdays 9 - noon. Did I mention Saturday is my only day to sleep really late? So, yes I would roll out of bed at 11:50 and take my overpriced garbage in my car to the T/S.
I moved in with my father in a different town and there, he pays for garbage as part of his annual taxes. He gets a placard for his truck and he can take garbage or recycling over almost any day all day (even Sundays!) and only pay extra for special trash like furniture or electronics. What an incredible system.
Northern Virginia (DC suburbs). All covered by taxes.
One smaller bin for all (mixed) recycling, and one large bin for everything else, except that lawn waste has to be put out separately in oversized paper sacks. Larger items will be taken if you call ahead (5 such special pickups are free per year; after that they charge). Christmas trees get picked up free of charge the first week of January; after that you need to order a special pickup. I will sometimes tell the neighbors that I have ordered one and invite them to throw their trees on top of mine.
The cans have to be put out at the curb facing the street and spaced a foot or so away from anything else, because the garbage truck no longer has attendants. Instead, the driver extrudes a large claw (from the truck, not from his person) that grabs the bin and lifts it so that it empties into the truck. The recycling truck sitll has attendants, but presumably it’s just a matter of time.
What was the typical fee for private service? $4 a bag would more than pay for a monthly trash bill in my area, even for a tiny household.