If I wasn't laughing that hard, I would have groan you!

Moi aussi Nil.

I totally agree. Recycling should be easier than throwing away, but in many places it's just the other way 'round.

If you live in the city of Zurich you can subscribe to get a reminder text message one day before each collection date: SMS-Abos

Yours gets PICKED-UP!

Here, we have to bring ours, but of course we are free to do that 24/7 (though they don't like glass to be deposited between 21 and 7).

Tom

Thanks Mark

All this discussion makes me happy to live in an apartment complex that has dumpsters for trash, as well as a collection area for paper and cardboard, so I can take any of those out at any time. (And yes, the Swiss really do always bundle their paper into perfectly rectangular bundles.)

To many swiss its seen as a duty to recycle, many people enjoy doing it, certainly when I was young me and my brothers fought over the right to be able to put the bottles in the recycling. Its just how people are here, also the reason the rubbish only gets picked up once a week is because the swiss recycle everything, many swiss even have a compost so that they can put it on there and not let it go to waste.

In many countries ( not so vigilant to recycling) there is a recycling bin at every corner so you dont have to walk or cycle forever ( especially in the winter).

What i haven't understood is why in Basel, they collect paper from your house once a month but for the plastic and metal you have to take them to the center by yourself...they are all belong to the recycling category...

Does anyone have any idea how to recycle shredded paper? I live in Zurich and you are forbidden from putting paper in a paper bag or box, I am at a loss on how to package it in such a way that it can be picked up. Any suggestions would be appreciated

We also got taken by surprise about this. We went out to IKEA and bought a wardrobe (rented a car) and quickly filled up our building's cardboard bin outside. But we still had more cardboard inside so thought we just had to wait until the following Tuesday when the trash gets taken out. Only to discover that the cardboard had just been picked up when we put it out and it won't be picked up again for another month. Not only must our neighbors be hatin', we have a mountain of cardboard in the entry way. You should have seen our "concierge's" look of disgust when she came to my house to tell me it was 1:15 PM and all clothes hung to dry must be taken down by 1:00 PM. I opened the door with this mountain of cardboard behind me, framing the scene. FML

You can return the cardboard to IKEA if you don't want it hanging around all month. Bins are by the customer service area usually. They are legally required to accept it as I recall.

Yep, we know that. But the difficulty is that 1) we would have to rent a car again. 2) we have to do this on a Saturday (work schedules) So, not a problem that resolves itself immediately

The idea of putting the stack down in the cave sounds like a good intermediate step, though!

If a carelessly discarded cigarette were to somehow end up in the cardboard skip late one night, then there'd be plenty of room in the morning for your stuff....

Yeah, that would not be good....I'd have to rebuild that stupid IKEA wardrobe.

That's an interesting question!!! The thing is, what would happen if you put a closed paper bag of shreds out? I mean, it's not as though they could find out your name, it's all shredded!

Or bite the bullet and spend the 2 francs to put it in the garbage, where it will go to be incinerated. Supposedly some paper is good for the garbage incineration process?

What does disposing of fish leftovers have to do with the trashcan?

Don't you have cats in the neighbourhood?

Wrap it up in newspaper? They don't seem to be so big on shredding paper here.

That's got to be annoying, I'm glad my appartments just have a great big bin container thing you can just dump paper into. Same with cardboard, and organic stuff.

Reading here, I feel pretty lucky, can pretty much dump my recylcables anytime (except after 10pm or on Sundays).

Sorry, but I presume that normal garbage is collected twice a week. So that you might specify what sort of garbage is only collected every 6 weeks

Use THIS
http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/i...skalender.html

tool, to establish your own personal garbage schedule