Those who know me know I like to recycle. I started recycling in our dorm (Becher) some years ago—paper, plastic, glass, cans, cartons. Every two weeks, it goes out to the curb for collecting.
Luckily, Austria loves to recycle. They used to call it "Wiederverwertung" but "Recycling" must be more German... Papier and Plastik were very easy to spot. We finally found the neighborhood glass collection center. Since there is a deposit on most bottles (like in Maine), most people return their bottles to the store. But there is the occasional jar of Marmalade or bottle of Kaffeesahne. (Cans are still a mystery. It seems they give up on aluminum for whatever reason.)
Most interesting is Biomüll (“compostable” garbage). Into one bin in the kitchen goes every leftover piece of food, every grape stem, toast crusts that Nikolas doesn’t eat, random peas that fell on the floor, two-day old Semmeln (check a future post on Semmeln!). They even sell bio-degradable baggies to collect the stuff.
When I take out garbage (there’s never that much because the food garbage is in the bio-baggy!), the Biomüll goes into a separate bin. No, the bin doesn’t smell good, but I don’t spend a lot of time inspecting the contents. Our building landscaper also puts cut grass and tree clippings into the container, so it’s not just food. Our neighbors have yelled at him for doing this actually because he’s taking away space for our Biomüll. But I guess he figures it’s not really garbage. It certainly shouldn’t go into paper recycling even though, I know, paper comes from trees.
It really has helped us take into consideration our food waste. I think having lived at boarding schools the past 13 of 16 years has made us a bit careless in the area of food waste. So now, when Nikolas leaves a bite of banana cake on his plate, I eat it up. It just seems like I’m more aware that it’s food because it’s going somewhere different. Will this mean I’ll gain more weight? I don’t know. If we have a meal together someday, beware if you leave any random bits of food on your plate.
