How to Recycle Liquids

As you would suppose: Our Green City has a perfect recycling system. In Freiburg, we use a green (?) container for paper, a brown bin for organic compostable stuff, and a yellow plastic bag for used packaging materials. We pay a deposit of 25 euro cents for drinks in plastic bottles that are reimbursed when we return the empty bottles. There are containers all over town accepting glass bottles to be separated in white, brown, and mostly green colors except those bottles with a deposit of 8 euro cents, refundable when we hand them in at the local supermarket.

We place the rest of the garbage that cannot be recycled in a dark-gray bin. For this container, you pay a yearly fee based on the volume you need for your waste. Although the bins come in one size only, plastic inserts reduce the fillable volume. Some people acquire those gray containers equipped with a lock for an extra fee, so your friendly neighbor doesn't deposit his garbage into your bin.

Garbage bin with lock and key

All in all, the recycling and waste business is booming in Freiburg. Only at the end of the year do discussions and letters to the editor become hot when a fee increase for those garbage bins for the coming year is in store.

You may imagine my shock when - during my latest trip to the city of Speyer - the hotel requested an additional way of recycling. Visiting the toilet, I was confronted with individual panels over each urinal demanding that I pee as instructed. In addition to beer, they had urinals for wine and water.

I was so disturbed that I composed a letter to the city councilors complaining about Freiburg's backwardness on my way home. 

Well, I ultimately didn't send the letter since visiting the conveniences in one of my favorite places, the Coucou, I found that they had an even finer separation for liquids exploiting their high number of urinals. A nicely framed cuckoo is watching your efforts. 

I admit my cheating. I emptied my beer into the champagne urinal.

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