Italians do Garbage Better

Two weeks after we bought our Italian farmhouse my husband Matt and I  were still trying to understand how the garbage worked. This is doubly embarrassing because in Italy we generate much less waste than we do in the United States. Italians use less packaging, they do not sell items in bulk, and reusable bags are the norm when shopping. If you forget your reusable bags, you have to buy plastic or paper ones, or try to carry your purchases without dropping anything. 

During our walk-through of the house, the sellers briefly explained that the garbage was color-coded. Glass went into the tall green container at the garbage collection bin 800 meters up the hill. Paper and cardboard, when it was not burned in the stove, went into a paper bag. Plastics and metal recyclables went in blue bags. Everything else went in yellow bags. Free bags were available at the old service station down the road that has beads hanging in the doorway. 

We recycle avidly at home in Florida so raccolta differenziata rifiuti (waste sorting) seemed easy enough. We put our food waste in the required biodegradable plastic bags that we quickly learned ripped to shreds. Every day we took a triple-layered bag to the bin so it would not stink up the house or attract bugs. Every day we would see them, piling up in the bin, right where we had put them. 

We share the garbage bin with about 6 other families and we were concerned that our unusually large new-house trash might cause trouble with our new neighbors. The first week, our yellow bags in particular piled up and filled the bin. 

In searching the web to find out what exactly could go in the blue bags, I discovered that the garbage guys collected certain bags on certain days. Yellow bags and paper are only picked up on Mondays and Thursdays respectively. Blue bags are taken Wednesdays and Saturdays. The handy graphic said nothing about the biodegradable sacks that still sat there degrading at the bottom of the bin.

Giuseppe our farmer-neighbor-friend came over and I showed him the website that I had bookmarked on my laptop. He looked at it and nodded. I asked him when they pick up the bio bags. He shook his head. “In the country, they don’t collect the bio bags.” He waved his hand around. “They expect farmers to compost it.” 

The garbage guys finally took our bio bags. That or some wild animal got into them.  Either way, they finally disappeared. We starting composting our bio bags or dropping them in a designated container on our drive into town. Using raccolta differenziata, our city of Tolentino recycles 74% of its waste. Figures are updated monthly and published online. In contrast, our county in Florida recycles less than 2% of its waste. 

We now stockpile our trash and drive it up the night before our appointed day. We still don’t know what day glass is gathered but we know that one of neighbors likes Moretti beer on the weekends. We don’t judge because they know we like our wine. 

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