Radfahren und Recycling

"Radfahren und Recycling" means "Cycling and Recycling" in German!

 

This is my bike.

 

 

In Germany people bike everywhere.  There are bike trails almost anywhere you want to go.

 

I like to go biking with Kieran or my friend, Julia.  I usually go biking for about one hour every day, unless it's raining.

 

In Germany they also do a lot of recycling.  It's different from in the States.  In Texas we had two huge garbage bins.  One for trash, one for all recyclable materials.  The garbage man picked them both up each week.

 

Here you have to sort out everything.  Trash, glass by color, plastics, paper, and cans.  There is even a place to recycle fabrics and old clothing.  We have to take all our cans and glass to these neighborhood recycle bins.  No one will pick them up from our house.

 

It's just a short bike-ride away.

 

You have to sort the glass into three categories - brown, clear, and green/colored.

 

They won't pick glass up from your house.

 

Kieran likes to look inside the bins.

 

Here's what he sees!

 

This is where you can take paper or broken down cardboard boxes.  They will pick up paper from your house once a month from a small can, so if we ever get big boxes, we usually bring them here so it doesn't fill up our paper container.

 

Guess where we sort our recycle at home...

 

In this cabinet thing! 

 

In front is our trash can.  Behind are bins for plastic, paper, and cans/glass.

 

When you take out the plastic, it has to be in a special bag.  It's called the "Gelb Sac" which means, the Yellow Bag. 

 

Everything from plastic baggies to yogurt containers and milk cartons goes in here.

 

 

Then you tie it up and take it out behind our garage.

 

Here is where we store our trash and recycle containers.  The green one on the left is where we keep the Gelb Sacs.  They collect the Gelb Sacs once a month.  The black one is garbage.  They collect those every two weeks.  The blue is paper.  They collect that every month.  The dark green one is yard waste.  You have to take that to a special pile.

 

Tada!  Now we put the Gelb Sac in the can. (Notice that these cans are tiny - about half the size of a regular American trash bin - and it gets collected half as often!)

 

So see you next time! Tschüß! (Bye!)