Bruxelles-Propreté et la confusion aux verre

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.

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!

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!

Bugger them, glass is going to be fed to my blue bags — that's what it says to do. What do you think?