Ireland vs USA, Part 6; Rubbish

What do you call it? Garbage? Trash? Here in Ireland it seems they usually call it rubbish, or in some places, refuse.

In the US, we have always taken our trash pick-up for granted. It’s always been part of what our property taxes to the town have covered. Now, there have been times when we weren’t happy about how the town handled it, such as when Point Pleasant went from once per week recycling pick-up to bi-monthly pick-up, which meant we had to go out and buy a second recycling can. Or when they didn’t pick up because of a snow storm or a holiday (our scheduled day was Monday, when all the holidays fall!). Or when they went from twice per week garbage pick-up to only once per week, except from Memorial Day to Labor Day. We bought another garbage can.

I realize this is flawed logic, but I get a little emotional over the whole garbage thing! I figure we paid property taxes (a lot of them) for 18 years to the town. The bulk of any town’s taxes go to the public school, and ours was no different. Since we never sent our kids to the schools, the town saved 63 years worth (total of all school years for all the kids for those 18 years) of what would have been spent on our kids had they gone to the schools. In effect, we saved them a ton of money. The least they could do was to be generous with garbage pick-up! Don’t even get me started on the town’s snow removal.

Anyway, back to Ireland. Each town has done something different. Dingle alternated weeks for garbage and recycling pick-up and had one can for each. New Quay did every other week and picked up both at the same time. Again, one can for each. New Quay had a compost bin for all the food scraps, and that was great! It cut down on garbage quite a bit. Johnstown (Arlkow) did every week garbage and every other week recycling, one can for each. In all the places, glass was not picked up by the truck, but each resident was responsible for taking glass recycling to the local “bottle bank.” This was usually in the center of town and easy to find, except for New Quay, where it was hidden down a residential street.

Here in Caherdaniel, there is NO garbage can as there is NO garbage pick-up! Crazy, right? The residents have to purchase special bags at the local store, one kind for “rubbish” and one kind for recycling. When the bag is full, you put it in your car and drive it to the garbage bins in town. The price of the bags is 3 euro for a recycling bag and 3 euro for a small or 5 euro for a large garbage bag, which covers the cost of the town removing the full bins. But without a can, where do you keep the bags? You don’t! They’d get smelly pretty fast, so you’ve got to take them into town as soon as they are full. Luckily the town is tiny and the drop-off place is only about 2 miles from the house.

Another interesting difference is how Ireland is trying to reduce their garbage overall. They use noticeably less packaging on all store-bought food. All packaging is recyclable. EVERYONE brings their own bags, boxes, or hand-held baskets to the grocery store. No plastic bags! No straws. Paper plates, paper towels, paper napkins are extremely expensive so almost no one uses them. Very few people get take-out food, since there are so few take-out (or take-away as they say here) restaurants, so no wasted packaging there. It’s hard to find to-go coffee, and if you do, it is always in a paper cup, never styrofoam. So in the time we have been here, I have been pleasantly surprised to see how little garbage and recycling a household of 8 or 9 has made. Having only one garbage can for 1-2 weeks has not been a problem…but I don’t think I’d ever get used to NO garbage can!