Garbage Day Redux

In the past I've mused about the lack of recycling on my street. I'm not sure why I expected Christmas to be any different. It ended up being worse than I possibly imagined.

In addition to the extra holiday waste, due to Christmas our trash collection day was pushed back. So it was closer to a week and a half worth of garbage versus just one week. While I'm happy to say that I had three overflowing recycling bins, I also had an overflowing 121L garbage can. Had we planned things a bit better I don't think it would have been overflowing, but we had thrown out the two florescent light bulbs from our kitchen that had died and they are both about three, maybe even four feet long. And then we had the ridiculous amount of styrofoam that the baby's new toy box was surrounded by. But when I compare my garbage to others, I don't feel quite so bad.

My neighbours to the left are a five person family. I quite expected the usual amount of garbage to double but I was pleased to see that it had not. It was the people to the left of them that nearly had my eyes popping out of my head.

They are a double income, no kids family. Both of them look to be late thirties to early fourties. I am generally annoyed with the woman anyway because she seems to feel the need to blast the radio of her frigging Buick Rendezvous, tuned to a horrible station in my opinion, as loud as it can possibly go. And she works shift work so she is coming and going at all hours of the day and night. I know this because I once talked to her at the superbox. For those of you that don't know, a superbox is a mailbox that the mail for numerous houses goes into. Each home has a key to their individual mailbox. There are probably close to twenty or thirty boxes in each. But I digress. Anyway, just because she is coming home at, oh I don't know, 1 or 2am, she STILL has the radio blasting at max. Seeing as she is to my left she has to drive right past my house. My bedroom is in the back of the house, probably at least eighty feet from the street and I can still make out the words to her terrible music. Very annoying!

I digressed further, sorry. The point to all this? A household with two adults, they had one recycling bin.....and SIX garbage bags! SIX! It would take my family around two months to get to six garbage bags and that is with a small child in diapers and cats. Words don't quite adequately express my shock.

And we wonder why we are swimming in garbage.