Check it out, folks. Pictured here alongside two very impressed German chickens and a pair of women's size 40 feet is the sum total of all the Restmüll we've accumulated since August 1.Restmüll is garbage--what's left over after all the paper goes into the paper recycling bin, all the non-Pfand glass bottles go into the glass recycling bins, all the food scraps go into the compost bin, and all the packing materials go into the wondrous gelbe Sack, the catch-all for packing materials (plastic containers, butter wrappers, bubble pack, milk cartons, styrofoam, toothpaste tubes, you name it).
Our Restmüll consists mainly of bicycle handlebar tape, dryer lint, an old polyester shirt, used razor blades, bike-grease infused rags, my hair, and a full vacuum cleaner bag we inherited from the previous tenants.
When we registered with the city of Freiburg a few months ago, we received a form for Restmüll collection. Garbage service for one year would have cost us well over 100 Euros, a hefty price to pay for about one cubic foot of trash over a six-month stay. Maverick Americans that we are, we didn't pay.
We considered driving our sack all the way back to Steinebach at the end of this month and combining it with Helen's garbage, but she doesn't pay for Restmüll service either, and we didn't want to have to, oh, I don't know, leave it in one of the trash receptacles at the local train station or something--not that we've ever even thought about doing such a thing for Helen before, let alone done it this past summer, of course. We considered sneaking it over to Elias's elementary school under cover of darkness and hefting it into one of their industrial trash containers--a method clearly used by other system abusers on our street--but taking advantage of young children's designated garbage space just seems so wrong.
We figured we'd wait until we moved out of our apartment to see how the situation panned out, but this evening, our new neighbors (HW's brother's family) came over for dinner, and they kindly invited us to cram our Restmüll on top of theirs for pickup tomorrow. Thus tonight, at long last, we bid adieu to four months worth of accumulated garbage.
3 comments:
Color me impressed! Would suggest however (and I think the German chickens would concur) that you could reduce it yet further by scattering the hair for birds to incorporate into their nests.
John makes me put our dryer lint in the compost -- so you might could reduce your load even more!
Lisa--we don't scatter the hair because it would get caught in the Koosh balls we're still pretending to learn to juggle. We take the balls to the park sometimes and have learned there are few places that aren't covered with human hair.
Anonymous--John must wear all natural fibers. I sometimes put lint in with the paper recycling even though polyester isn't pulp.
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