Recycling 101…or maybe Återvinning 202

Today’s post is a bit of nonsense related to my journey with Recycling (English), Recyclage (Flemish from Belgium) or återvinning (Swedish).

It was years ago, when we prepared to go home to the US for a year long home assignment, that a Belgian friend told me to “go home and teach those Americans how to recycle”.  Wow, I thought to myself.  That’s a task.  Teach those Americans.  How many to teach?  Which ones might need to know something about recycling?

Then we landed in Chicago, and funny enough, one of our dear friends from our Serve Globally support staff has a son-in-law whose family ran the recycling center for the south suburbs of Chicago.  One quick phone call and we were on a tour of the center, complete with safety vests on and hard hats to protect our precious heads in case some wild piece of scrap came flying out of the machine.  All in all, we were pretty impressed with how things are recycled in Chicago, in spite of all the bad press recycling gets in the city.   You know, the old “put everything in the blue recycle bin means that nothing really gets recycled” routine.  Actually, it was quite interesting to watch how all the recyclable products are dumped onto the rotating conveyor belts and then a picture is taken of what’s on the belt and then, further up the line, a puff of air blows the paper to one bin while the plastics go into another bin, separate from the aluminum and tin cans.  Those nasty little plastic grocery bags, which are apparently clogging up so much of our ocean waters in the world, make a mess at the recycle plant as well.  There just isn’t a good way to recycle those ~ at least in the plant in south suburbs of Chicago ~ in the year 2012.

Recyclables as they arrive ~ good thing we were wearing our hardhats!

First sorting station....at this point, it still all looks like just plain garbage to me!

The machine that took the pictures and then puffed the air to sort the recyclables was originally from the Netherlands....maybe we should have spoken some Dutch there!

Fast forward now to 2019, living in Malmö, Sweden, where we are pretty impressed with the återvinning (recycling) system that is used here.  We learned the ground rules while living with our dear friend from our church for the first 3 months here in Sweden.  And we learned the rules well.  Then, we learned how to sort and deliver our recyclables to the recycling center nearby.  But now…..

Now, the city took away the old bins (a brown one for compost and a green one for regular garbage, and us hauling all the other recyclables to the center), and replaced them with 2 new bins, labeled 1 and 2 (how clever is that??!)  In each bin, there are several different sorting bins: for example, for compost, regular garbage, colored glass, plain glass, aluminum and tin cans, plastics, newspaper, paper cartons….I think that’s it!

Out with the old bins...and our weekly trips to the recycle park...

In with the new bins, cleverly labeled 1 and 2

Just in case you thought it was just a plain old garbage bin...complete with instructions (in Swedish) and pictures to help those of us who are still learning this language!

So, not only is the system easier for us to use, it provides for great entertainment when the garbage men come by to pick things up.  The recycle garbage truck actually has a robotic arm that lifts the bins out of the big plastic bin (number 1 or 2, depending on which week it is), and empties everything according to its’ separate compartment in the truck.

Go figure!

Just in case you ever wondered if this blog was always just about ministry.

 It’s about life as well!.

Because there’s always garbage in life.