Bruxelles-Propreté et la confusion aux verre

Simon Butcher

Friday, May 25. 2007

Posted by Simon Butcher in Belgium, Rambling

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Bruxelles-Propreté et la confusion aux verre

Meet Louis: Ordinarily he works for Bruxelles-Propreté, the garbos here in Brussels. Louis is an incredibly busy man since he started his second job with Nintendo as the half-brother of Mario. Unfortunately, this has left Louis little time to properly communicate with plebeians with regard to how garbage should be handled.

Lately, Louis and his team of public relations boffins have decided to attempt rectification of their past communications that disappeared silently — They have attempted to convey to the great-unwashed how glass should be recycled. In order to tailor the message to the masses, they've decided it's a good idea to treat everyone like children.

For those who don't know, here in Brussels we place our garbage out on the street in regulation bags. These bags come in four colours, depending on what they're designed to contain: A white bag for normal waste, a yellow bag for paper and cardboard, a green bag for garden waste, and finally a contentious blue bag for plastic, metal, cartons, and maybe glass.

Ick! The blue PMC bag doesn't digest everything.

Over the last few weeks, Brussels has been hit with a full-blown media assault regarding this blue bag, from print to radio, and even announcements in supermarkets! Each one follows a similar theme — the garbage bags “eat” garbage, but certain bags only like certain “food”. Yum, recyclables!

Yum! Only PMD: Plastic bottles, metal packaging and drink-cartons.

Apparently recycling glass was always accepted (as printed on the regulation blue bags), but they've now decided that all glass recycling should be handled by glass bubbles («bulle à verre»), which are giant glass collection points that supposedly look like bubbles. In the city centre, these “bubbles” have become harder to find, and I'm sure my nearest one is at least an hour's walk from here. Not particularly convenient.

So, what's the story with glass recycling? I've bought some brand-new blue bags yesterday to see what the story is from the bag's perspective. According to the bag, it's preferred that I use a “bubble” but glass it still accepted! Yum!