This top photo is our neighbor's trash bin. Most people around here have them. They are built out of welded metal. Some of them get really fancy looking with bent and/or rolled wires. I would think if you are going to have a permanent metal thing in your front yard, why not make it look good- right? Even if it is to hold your trash. Some of them have tops, some don't. A lot of people use the plastic grocery store type bags for their trash. Brown paper grocery bags I have not seen once here.The bottom picture is our trash that I’m a little embarrassed to show, but we are having trouble with our garbage lately because we don't have a garbage "cage" yet. The stray dogs that find their way into our colonia have discovered our tasty trash and we now are having to go out into the yard or the empty lot next to ours where the dogs have drug it to pick up and re-bag our torn open trash. Yuck!! We tried putting this wooden pallet on top to deter the dogs. Didn't work.
Garbage is picked up once a week. The garbage truck is a large hauling truck. You know the kind that has a back that rolls up. Usually there are 4 garbage men working. Two to grab the trash bags and throw them into the truck and another two working inside the back of the truck. Guess what the men inside the truck do? They pat down the trash to feel for recyclables. If they feel something, they will tear open the trash bag and dig through to find it and then throw it into another pile. The first week I was here I didn't know Honduras recycled. But why wouldn't they? There is a lot of money to be had cashing in recyclables. I've seen huge piles of empty plastic pop bottles in some yards around Honduras. I'm not sure what you get per pound or piece here for each type of recyclable. I read a Honduras blog post with a pretty cool incentive to recycle here.
On the road to Sister's school there is a large metal recycle place and I have seen trucks loaded up with every kind of scrap metal you can imagine. The wires used in fans or the spokes in bike tires. It's quite a sight when you see all that metal just hanging everywhere.
Anyway, I digress. Once I saw the garbage man tear open a bag of our trash with his bear hands to dig out a plastic bottle I cringed. It made me feel so bad! Now I separate all the recyclables into separate bags. I hope other people consider doing this too.
Now we just need to find someone to build us a garbage bin, cage, thingy.
2 comments:
There is so much we take for granted in the U.S. Glad you separate for the garbage men! That is thoughtful of you. I enjoyed reading all your updates and seeing all the pics. The kids look as cute as ever too! Love and miss you, Gina
Shame on you -- what will the neighbors think? ;-)
It's easy to get one built. Just figure out the size you need and draw a picture of what you want. I noticed the one in the picture looks like it has legs. I haven't seen that before. Ours is embedded in concrete permanently so it won't tip over or get stolen. We didn't do a lid, but if our colonia ever gets to the point of having stray dogs running around we will add one.
Here's a picture:
Basurero
We save the plastics and cans separately, too, but we only have a big bag about every couple of months so I'm afraid that they may still dig through the trash.
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