Recycling in Alsace

by Suzele
(Alsace)

Let's kick this new section of the website off with a really exciting topic like recycling! Yeah!!!

I know you are dying to know all about it too...

Most everyone here in Alsace (and I suspect in all of France too) recycles.

We drink a lot of bottled water and wine so we have plenty of recyclables.

And in every village (and multiple locations in larger towns) you will find a few very large metal containers with holes in them for recycling.

I'll try to remember to take a picture of them the next time I go...oh I know you can't wait for that photo!! ;)

Usually they're somewhere in the grocery store parking lot.

In a really big city, you can even find them near large apartment buildings....in cul de sacs, etc...

Enough with the useful information...

It's a bad habit of mine...I feel like a tourist information assistant sometimes...which is fine on this website, but a bit strange in normal social encounters.

It's what happens when you spend all of your time telling visitors about Alsace or telling French people about the English language or the US.

Where I live, I have to take all of my recycling to one of these places every so often...whenever I feel like it or whenever I can't stand looking at it any longer...

Some people are luckier and have a truck that comes once a week or every other week to pick up their plastic, glass and paper recyclables.

But this is the sort of thing you find in Alsace (and France in general) that has always surprised me...

And I have lived here for quite a while now...

The recycling is just one example of these types of tasks that everyone has to do occasionally...not very often...

And it can take up a good bit of time to do them really...when you think about how much alcoholic and nonalcoholic liquid a person will consume in a month or two...or three...in my case...sigh...

Then multiply it by four (average family size).

But French people generally recycle despite the fact that they are busy and it's a pain and it's inconvenient.

There are many other things just like this that they generally do in France even though it's time consuming and they are busy...

But that's for another day ;)

Bonne journée (Have a good day) or

Scheena Dag (Have a good day)

I'll let you guess which one is French and which one is Alsatian ;)