Residue of our Lives

I woke up this morning and staggered into the kitchen to make coffee, only for the mess on the floor to finally get to me. It reminded me of the streets of Naples during this month’s trash collector strike: a stack of shin-high egg cartons and bottles next to the trash and under the sink a clutter of empty alcohol, yogurt, and drink bottles. Sigh. The residue of our lives.

What on Earth do we do with the recycling? It’s a question we’ve been pondering since we got here. We have to admit that recycling hasn’t been on our minds in a long time. Coming, that is, from Philadelphia where recycling is a joke. The practice is much more serious here — law, even. Somehow, though, it’s much too complicated.

If it was just a matter of separating trash into different bins, we could easily handle such a system. What really gets us is that all the bottles we accumulate with a 10 to 25-cent deposit have to be returned to the store of purchase. Which leaves us trying to remember where particular bottles came from and then running recycling errands all over town. Who can bother? Except that in sum, it comes to serious money.

One water company has skirted the law by producing a boxed still water. It’s main advertising promo is that the buyer doesn’t have to pay a deposit. Ha! Even the Germans apparently get fed up with the recycling system.

One perk is that our local grocery store has made it fun to recycle. Aldi, our regular shopping spot for discount foodstuffs, has a cool machine next to the candy and chips aisle that sucks in plastic bottles and crushes them out of sight. Then you get a credit slip to put towards your purchases. All of a sudden, recycling makes shopping seem cheaper!

I pointed to the mound of bottles under the sink when Tony walked in and he set to work separating them. Some would go downstairs for our landlord to deal with, others would come with us on our Saturday morning shopping run.

“This makes us look like a bunch of alcoholics,” Tony said as he pulled out a month and a half’s supply of beer, wine, and mini-sparking wine bottles.