Taking Out the Trash...Japanese Style!

First, I finally changed my blog to a format that pleased me. I like the bright colors and I think the posts are easier to read. Hopefully there will be no more changes :)

Second, I write today to talk about the delight of garbage pick up in Japan. In the next post, I'll post a You Tube video of a garbage truck in Japan. They are pink, have flowers on the side, play a delightful jingle and the drivers are friendly....

That aside, conservation starts in your house. As stated by this article in the New York Times, the residents of Yokohama (the nearest city to Yokosuka) were provided a 27 page manual on how to separate their trash for the garbage truck.

The sorting was so overwhelming for some residents, they would take their garbage to local parks and dump it in the trash there. The Yokohma government sent out watchdogs to sort though this dumped household trash to find the name of the people doing this. Then, they would go to their houses and attempt to train them on how to dispose of their trash. Apparently, it has caused all sorts of uproar.

As Americans, we are certainly not exempt from sorting our trash. I hear in Yokosuka there are five bins in each home in which to sort trash. If you do it wrong, the garbage people will bring all of your trash to your front door and leave it there until next time, which you hope you can get it right.

I read somewhere about one American woman who tried to cheat and stuffed all her trash inside empty milk jugs and then just left the jugs in the correct plastic bin. She woke to find the jugs of trash lined up on her front porch.