The Interview - with a few recycling containers

Interview your favorite fictional character.

I do not believe it. One of the most boring prompts I ever got. Only 55 other bloggers bother with it, which explains how boring it really was. Just because WordPress put a years worth of daily prompts into an online album, it does not give them the right to ignore their bloggers with such repeats. They seem to think that it was really something fantastic to record all the old prompts in an online list, not thinking that some of us had answered the 365 prompts already. How dumb and stupid can you get? And now for something completely different.

No, this is not a bin for used up prompts, although it would be suitable. It is a bin for your doggy if you take a walk with him or her. Yes, we Swiss love order, tidiness and above all cleanliness and so we have these bins distributed along the river bank. They are even supplied with handy plastic bags. I am sure the dog lovers amongst us know how it works. Fido, or whatever he is called, had a natural urge. We all have them sometimes, but we have things called toilets, or you do your best to wait until at home. It is difficult to make it clear to Fido that he has to wait until arriving at home and so you allow him to go ahead. You then take a plastic bag, insert it over your hand, grip the unwanted recycling results with the bag and deposit them in the doggy bin. Humans are happy and Fido could not really care less. The things you see as you take a walk along the river.

If you really want to see how well we organise ourselves in this little country, then see this. These strange metal containers have a purpose. I found them standing next to our local tennis club. Perhaps there is one for discarded tennis balls. They are not Swiss robots spying on the population and recording all movements and thoughts. No they are bins, each for a certain purpose.

“I only accept glass.”

“Who said that?”

“Me, the one at the back on the left.”

“He is such a show off, I am especially reserved for aluminium foil.”

“And what about me, I literally swallow plastic bottles and spit them out again a few months later as a new plastic bottle.”

“I collect old clothes, but make sure they are clean before you throw them in.”

“Just a minute, I can hardly hear myself think. Take it easy, I am sure you all have a meaningful purpose in your lives.”

“Of course we do, but only because of the thoughtlessness of the humans. They would otherwise throw their rubbish unsorted in the bin bags.”

I suppose they are right. On the other hand these super containers are not cheap and neither is the recycling process afterwards. We, the Swiss tax payers, pay for the privilidge of having freshly sorted refuse, all neatly separated waiting for recycling. 

Today Mr. Swiss let me out on my own to do the week-end shopping. It must be at least a month, when not more, that I had the steering wheel of a car in my hands, but I remained cool and composed. I was surprised myself that I still knew how it worked. Mr. Swiss was attending the funeral of one of his ex school friends. I also belong to my school site on Facebook and it is tragic when you hear about the demise of a classmate and just a little depressing. As you become older, it happens more often than you would like and you realise how short our stay is in this time and space. Mr. Swiss saw many old acquaintances at the funeral. There will be another class reunion in a couple of weeks he told me.

And now I hear the call of the wild again. My blog is written, the sun is shining and I am in a short sleeved t-shirt mood, so I will put on my walking shoes and go - with a camera of course. This time it will be a solo walk, as Mr. Swiss is still recovering from the morning exhaustion. It will probably be a quick hop to the castle, a short visit to the horses and I have an appointment at the cemetery. There was an interesting ornament I saw, but unfortunately my prize winning attempt was blurred. It was a cold windy day and probably my hands were shivering. I now intend to do a retake of this.

See you all tomorrow with another warmed up boring prompt.

WordPress Daily prompt: Think global, act local

Think global, act local - write a post linking a global issue to a personal one




The Swiss are quite good at sorting things. They have a perfect organisation.

But let's go back a few years, you know when you just threw into the garbage what you did not need, because there was always something to buy which would replace it. This, of course, is our wonderful civilised Western world. If you were perhaps living in Africa then you would learn the value of objects and automatically re-use them. We call it recycling, and this is something new and we are still learning, with a helping hand from the government.

You remember the bottles with the fizzy drinks made of glass. You did return them because usually you got a deposit returned on them. Then some bright spark decided plastic was the solution. Plastic was cheap and lightweight, so let's create plastic bottles for our drinks. Then we discovered that you could fill a plastic bottle with even two liters, the bottles became bigger. Eventually we could deposit the empty plastic bottles in an container, being advised to take the top off, tread on it to crush it to make the volume smaller. Now I can even return my empty plastic bottles. In the local supermarket we have a large container for the plastic bottles. I think Switzerland must hold the record for returning the bottles. Especially Monday morning after the week-end when you might have to wait to be able to throw the bottles in. At the week-end we are thirsty.  Well done, we are being environment friendly.

Glass is still used and still exists, but even that has been sorted. We have containers for the glass, but glass is not just glass, according to the Swiss. It comes in different colours. It is clear, brown or green, so there are three openings to receive the glass, marked with the names of the colours. We spend time throwing our glass away, making sure that the correct colours are put together. One day I arrived at the glass container with my bag of glass in different colours, but had to wait as the workers were emptying the container. Then I had a surprise. They open the container and lo and behold there is just one compartment inside the container and not three, meaning that the clear, brown and green glass are actually all together in the container. The men just crush the glass, so that it was nicely mixed, lift the container onto the lorry and drive away, putting a new empty container in its place. So what did I do with my three different sorts of coloured glass afterwards. Yes, correct, I just threw it all into the same place. It was the last time I had sorted my glass in different colours.

Another way of being environment friendly is to dispose of your tin cans, after all we do not want to pollute our ground water. But you do not just throw a can in the depony, no. First of all you removed the label which has been glued to the can showing what it contained. Sometimes these labels are so well stuck on the can that you might have to scrap them off with a sharp knife. Be careful, many are the plasters I have used after cutting myself. Then you have to remove the lid and bottom of the can, put them inside the can and then crush the can flat. Only in this way can you put it through the small slit in the container.

And then we have people that just throw their waste in a plastic bag onto the rubbish dump. Be ashamed people, this is not correct, but no problem. Here the Swiss have a solution. They have close circuit cameras observing the rubbish dump. They will find you and you will get your just deserts in the way of a very expensive fine. If they do not catch you on the film, they have their other methods. Someone is employed to examine the rubbish bag searching for clues to find the owner. Perhaps an envelope with a name and address, a shopping list, a receipt, they will get you.

Of course we have our machines which are no longer repaired, due to high costs. No, we just throw them away and buy a new one. The Swiss have solved this. If you buy a new washing machine, dishwasher, television or whatever you pay a surcharge for the disposal of the old machine.

Our normal rubbish collection takes place once a week. We have to fill our rubbish in special black plastic bags which are very expensive, costing about one swiss franc each according to the size. Our local supermarket only sells these direct at the cash desk. They are not available on the supermarket shelves, as too many were being stolen.

Of course, I follow the rules, it is a matter of common sense. We have become a throw-away society and acting as if we had a second world to take over when the first sinks in a sea of rubbish and pollution. In Switzerland we feel safe, big brother is watching you even at the rubbish dumps

The Grasshopper, the cat and the big rubbish collection

My cat Fluffy, the blind one, was sitting in the garden concentrating on a twig of one of my buddleia (butterfly bushes), so I wondered what he had had a sniff of. Sitting on a leaf almost hidden from view was the grasshopper as above. I naturally fetched my camera and made a few photos. This was the only one that was clear enough to show, grasshoppers just don't like being photographed. We always get a few during the summer, but this summer did not seem to be grasshopper weather. Fluffy was fascinated by this insect and just would not leave it alone. I put my camera away and came back to the garden. What did I see - two grasshopper legs poking out of each side of Fluffy's mouth, he had already devoured the head and shoulders. I suppose it's nature. Like all good cats he had a good washing sessions afterwards as if to make the most of his protein rich evening meal. I just wonder how a blind cat manages to find such things.

Another event this evening was clearing out the cellar and putting out the rubbish. Tomorrow morning is the big collection and more or less anything is taken. I took a few photos of the deposits outside where we live and would add not all was from us. The gentleman with his back to us is my husband, and the tall bloke is my oldest son Patrick. Although he is autistic, he is completely there to help when you need a strong person. The large black trunk in the picture has been with us for many years. When my husband went to England for a year to learn english his parents bought the trunk for the transport of his luggage. In those days it was done more than today. We have kept it since, but it is just not ideal in the modern days for travelling. Actually we got rid of quite a lot and now have some space in the cellar to be able to collect more rubbish for the next collection next Spring. Someone once said to me you should live as if you were going to move every month, and there is a bit of truth in it.

As soon as people had put the stuff out I noticed three or four cars driving past very slowly. A young man even came up to us and asked if the trunk could be had. We told him it would be ok, but when he found out there were no drawers in it he left it. In the big towns there are sometimes fights about the stuff left to be collected. Various families and groups organise themselves and the wife sits on the rubbish put out until the family comes with a transporter to take it away. I won't go into details about the nationalities of the people that take the stuff, but some are Swiss. As I sit here writing, my window looks out towards the path and I hear the sound of people pushing trolleys down to the corner where the rubbish is being collected.

It's just Rubbish so let's recycle

When I was a kid we just threw stuff away we didn’t need. We had a milkman that delivered the milk in bottles and he collected the emptied bottles and brought new bottles of milk. If you bought something at a grocery shop it was packed in a paper bag. This was thrown away, without any burden to the environment, after all paper can be burnt or it just disintegrates. Electrical gadgets were repaired as far as it would go. If you got chips in the local fish and chip shop they were wrapped in newspaper (when I was very young) but later in white paper bags. Who remembers buying a packet of Smith’s crips with the salt packed separately in a little blue wax paper wrapper, there was no system for including the salt with the crisps. Oh happy days, you had no feeling of guilt and could just go through life without having a bad conscience. Even smoking wasn’t a danger to your health although that is debatable. I gave it up about ten years ago and would never start again, but my grandfather managed to live to the ripe old age of 89 and rolled his own. Now I am getting off the beaten track.

Where I work we have a recycling company next door. Actually they don’t recycle but supply the various bins for putting the goods in. The company mainly deals with old metal, but also has containers for glass. The glass containers are naturally sorted in clear glass, green glass and brown glass. I remember once watching the men from the council emptying the glass bins. They opened it up and guess what? It didn’t really matter where you religiously put the glass, it all ended up in the same place. The main thing I suppose is that we all sorted the glass before throwing it away. We had a machine at the local supermarket where you put the big plastic bottles in and it automatically squeezed them to make more room. The problem was that the squeezing bit did not always work properly and most of the time you just heard an automatic siren going to warn the personnel to come and have a look. Did they? Well not really. Eventually they put up three enormous containers with a poster stuck on the side to show how to take the lid off the bottle, tread on the plastic to force the air out and then put the lid back on. However, this was not popular so now you just throw the plastic bottle into the container and take it that someone does the work for you – perhaps a professional plastic bottle squeezer.

We also used to have bins for aluminium foil. Luckily the use of aluminium foil to wrap up chocolate is not longer necessary. This has now been taken over by a sort of paper which looks and feels very much like a synthetic paper. Whether this is more environment friendly or not I don’t really know.

Our cars now have catalysators, but still run on petrol. I wonder how longer our oil reserves will last? In any case, no worry, I am sure Mr. Bush will make sure that they remain in the hands of the most competent. The only reason why I actually try to save on throwing stuff away is because we are only allowed to use special plastic bags to throw the stuff away in where I live. They have to have the crest of the local rubbish burning place on them and cost about one Swiss Franc each which is not cheap. Apparently it is to cover the rubbish disposal costs at the main dump. They have now found out that the rubbish disposal unit is not being used to the full as they are not getting so much rubbish as they used to.

Another thing that comes to my mind are the rubbish disposal places being watched by a hidden camera. Big Swiss rubbish disposal brother is always watching and there is many a Swiss citizen that has been in court for throwing something away that could have been got rid of properly (naturally by paying for it extra). We even have people that examine the rubbish. If something is found that is suspect, the rubbish is examined and be warned if you have thrown perhaps an envelope away with it showing your name and address. The rubbish police are soon knocking at the door.

We are lucky in the village where I live. We have special rubbish collections, usually taking place at the end of September and March, the reason being that officially in Switzerland you are only allowed to move on these dates. If you move in between and find no-one to take over the place where you are living, then you are liable for paying the rent until these moving times. These special rubbish collections are divided into general stuff like furniture and metal objects.

Actually I took the photos as I was coming out of work as I found it interesting material, but the photos lead me to thinking things over.