Stuff you throw out

Rubbish, trash, garbage, gomi. We have various names for it. We have various ways of disposing of it, depending on where you live. A fellow missionary in Japan has written lots about it on her blog. My husband insisted it needed to be included as an aspect of re-entry shock. In Tokyo we had a complicated system of rubbish sorting and collection and it differs from area to area around the metropolis. The city council even gave out free calendars informing us of the days we got to put out our rubbish. That is because it is easy to get confused. Mondays: Plastic recyclable rubbish (which has "Pura" written on the side of it) in grey semi-clear bags. Tuesdays: Burnable rubbish in blue bags you buy from the local shop. Also the day for batteries, cans, bottles, aerosols and other dangerous items. Wednesdays: Second of the month was unburnable rubbish (not including the above mentioned 'dangerous items') in orange bags from the local shop. First and third weeks were PET bottles (excluding lids). Thursdays: Second and fourth were paper and clothing (except if it was raining and it was surprising how often that happened). Fridays: Burnable rubbish in blue bags. Certain things were not admissible to curb pick-up. They included furniture and things too big to fit in the bags. To have these removed, you had to call a number and pay a fee to have them picked up. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Until you think about something as simple as changing toothbrushes. The old toothbrush goes into 'unburnable', the new toothbrush is removed from its cardboard and plastic packaging. The cardboard obviously goes into 'paper', but I could never remember whether the plastic was 'plastic' or 'unburnable' - I had to check the packaging. Space is so tight around Tokyo that you have to be careful about where you put your garbage. One of the important things we were told by our real estate agent, when we signed the lease, was exactly where to put our garbage. Our spot was on the very corner of our block as it connected with the road. You can see our car park in the picture, the car in the centre of the picture. The bin went at the front right hand corner of the car. Parking was so tight that if our small bin was out for collection I had to move it to park the car. You would think that it'd be a relief to come to Brisbane and find there was only two different types. But instead we feel like we're breaking rules. How can we put all these different 'types' of garbage into the same bin? Habits are hard to break. At least we can back the car in and out without having to shift the bin!