When we lived in The Netherlands, we lived next door to really nice Dutch neighbors who at one time had been real farmers. After retiring, they still lived in the farmhouse and had a veggie garden, a couple of ponies, a dog, and a flower garden. But they threw their garden waste in the weekly trash pick-up.
In the early 2000's, our Dutch village garbage and compost pick-up became a paid service. We were charged by the weight of the garbage we left in our containers on pick-up day. I actually found this system quite challenging and interesting. We learned to separate our trash and to use recycling containers in the village for paper and glas. I don't remember about the metal recycling, so we must not have had much of that.
Besides being issued a special garbage container coded especially for us so that we could be charged, we were issued a green container for compost/garden/lawn waste. We were also charged for that weight. Luckily our friendly gardener had already started a compost heap out behind our garage, so we never paid to dispose of that waste. It just rotted and turned into good stuff to be returned to the veggie garden or my flowerbeds. And as we lived at the end of a farm road, no one had any problem with our "heap." Not even us😘
I still wonder why our Dutch neighbors paid to send their compost and twigs to the village compost center. Well, this morning I went to deposit real trash for today's pick-up and saw that my neighbor here in the US was doing the same as my former neighbor in The Netherlands.
We live out in the "sticks," folks, and they were leaving bags of sticks, dirt, and garden waste for the garbage collectors. 😩😩😩
Duh❣Should I show my neighbors my compost heap out behind our barn?
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