I finally woke up early enough to take the picture of the trash system at our house. You know the big trashcans and huge dumpsters used in the U.S. ? The trash in Japan does not work that way, in addition to sorting the trash about 6 different ways (we have tons of trash cans!) each type of trash also has its own scheduled day. So on Monday we have burnable trash which consists of food, diapers, paper (but not newspaper or magazines or food boxes, that is another trash) anything gorss like band-aides, personal items, q-tips, etc. Then Tuesday is plastics and packaging which consists of all the plastic packaging that comes on stuff you buy, potato chip bags, bottle tops, one time food packaging(yogurt, sour cream) toothpaste containers (cleaned) shampoo, conditioner, lotion, etc, (all cleaned!) Wednesday is Cans and Bottles (cleaned and dry) then Thursday is burnable again. SO we have 4 days of trash. So your regular bottle of water would consist of paper trash, plastic trash and plastic bottle trash!
Sometimes the crows get to your trash then your trash ends up all over the street and if you are not home you don't know about it until a neighbor tells you. That is when good candy comes in handy :)
These people are lucky: in addition to a net they also have a container, it gets folded up after the trash people come. No trash is allowed out before 6 am in the morning and if the nets arn't out yet and you need to leave for work- you can't leave your trash.... It is a little difficult to get used to. I wish we could just pay for a trash service to come and pick up our garbage :)
