Monday Morning Musings - Trash

er... maybe it's more afternoon?  But I was thinking of this this morning.

Last Wednesday evening, we forgot to take the trash out to the curb, and none of us were awake or dressed enough to run out there Thursday morning when the trash men came.  Therefore, our cans were still full and trash built up around the house because we couldn't take it out. 

All weekend, we were lamenting over our predicament.  It would be another week before the trash men came again so it was either wait it out (not really our first choice), or go to the dump (we didn't really like that option either because you have to pay to dump stuff). 

Then I remembered how much trouble trash was in Korea.  There were no large trash bags.  The largest they had were shopping bag sized which was convienent in a way because you could buy them at almost any grocery/department store check-out and use them for shopping bags as well. 

But the Korean trash system is very specific.  You must separate food and throw it away in very small yellow bags (BTW egg shells aren't food, they go in with the regular trash).  Recyling is big in Korea, but it's not easy.  You have to separate paper, cans, glass, plastic, and cardboard; all in their own bags or boxes.

So you didn't just have one or two bags to take out.  You had at least six!  And it wasn't always easy to take out the trash.  Most large apartment complexes had a designated trash "area" with organized piles of bags within the parking lot, but smaller apartment buildings and individual homes didn't.  For us--we lived in a small apartment building--there was a place down the road where we could leave our trash bags.  It wasn't too far away, but it was far enough that we would try and coordinate taking out the trash with other errands we had to run.

There were also trash "police."  These guys would check the trash bags to make sure that people were disposing things properly.  If there was a problem, they would watch for the person who was doing it wrong and then fine them.  This was scary for us because no one told us about the trash system until we had lived there for almost a year!  We could have gotten in big trouble.

They also had specific rules for businesses.  I'm not quite sure what they were, but somehow they were so strict that cities don't put out public trash cans because they're afraid that buisnesses will break the rules and throw their trash out in the public cans.  From what we saw, businesses throw their trash out on the far side of the sidewalk in front of their shops.  Gross, huh.  Especially since we knew you can't flush T.P. down the toilet in Korea, and the trashmen don't come regularly.  Eww! 

So after thinking about that, I can't complain too much about our current trash problem.