Incoherent Scribblings

The Yellow Bag Bandits

This past Wednesday, for the second month in a row, we forgot yellow bag day.

Now, I am sure you are asking what is yellow bag day and why is it such a big deal that we forgot it again?

For those of you not living in Germany, keep in mind that the Green Party is pretty powerful here. As you might imagine, recycling is high on their agenda and as a result, Germany has a pretty serious recycling program. In fact, I have heard that there are even “recycling police” whose job is to go through an apartment complex’s garbage and if they find stuff in the (as I call it) “nasty garbage” that should have been recycled, they have been known to fine entire apartment buildings.

In this area, the “recycling police” aren’t that anal, but shortly after we moved here we were told that there are three types of garbage in our little town. First, is “nasty garbage.” This is the garbage that you really have to throw away; bones, potato peelings, used cat litter, etc. Second is recyclable material which is denoted with the famous “Grüne Punkt” and mostly consists of packaging. The third group is made up of paper, cardboard, glass, wood, and a few other things that I can’t remember. The items that make up the third group are to be kept separate and are not picked up by garbage men, but must be disposed of on your own at various recycle bins in town.

It isn’t as complicated as it sounds, but did take some getting used to. I have never been against recycling, but at the same time never lived anywhere that had a recycling system. So, with the exception of when I lived in Iowa and got 5 cents for every pop can I returned, I am ashamed to admit (on Earth Day nonetheless) that until I moved to Germany I never recycled.

Nasty garbage is picked up by garbage men based on a contract with your apartment building. In our case, nasty garbage gets picked up every two weeks. (Thankfully, there are dumpsters outside so we don’t have to keep our nasty garbage in the house.)

Items with “der Grüne Punkt” are put in yellow bags and are collected once a month by the “Grüne Punkt” guys. Once a month! This wouldn’t be so bad, except take a moment and think about all the packaging-type garbage you produce. Milk cartons, yogurt containers, aluminum cans, cheese wrappers, paper towels, cereal boxes… the list goes on and on.

Because yellow bags are picked early in the morning, the night before yellow bag day, there are literally mountains of yellow bags on the street corners. Our yellow bag day is generally Wednesday, which means we need to take our yellow bags out to the pile on Tuesday evening. However, if a holiday happens to fall during the week of yellow bag day (which is what happened last month with Easter) the schedule gets shifted and so, last month the yellow bags were picked up on Tuesday. Since Tuesday isn’t our regular day, last month we completely missed yellow bag day.

Our apartment building may have a dumpster for nasty garbage, but we must keep our yellow bags in the basement. So, since we missed yellow bag day in March, we started April with four yellow bags (we produce about one yellow bag per week).

A. noticed mounds of yellow bags on his way home from work on Tuesday night this week, and though he mentioned it to me, we completely forgot about it until about 9:00 Wednesday morning. And of course, by then the yellow bags were gone and we were left with seven yellow bags in the basement.

So, last night under the cover of darkness with seven yellow bags in the trunk we drove around town looking for the area where the yellow bags had not yet been picked up. When we reached next village we spotted a mountain of yellow bags.

As we drove nonchalantly down the street we turned off the headlights, sneakily stopped the car just in front of a pile, quickly tossed our seven bags onto it, jumped back into the car, and drove away. As we drove home I told A. that we should have worn black to do our deed; then we would have been dressed like the bandits I felt we were!