French rubbish

I like to think that you regard this blog as reasonably civilized, elegant, at moments even chic .... well today your opinion may change.

The lovely Suzanne of Old Grey Mare is encouraging us all again to think about what we do to help keep this planet clean.  She was the inspiration behind my compost post, and today you can thank her because you're going to hear about French rubbish!

I'm sorry but this is not a joke..  Here we go...

Can you believe that for the sake of a blog post I actually took pictures of our rubbish being collected this morning!   My children say that the men in white coats will soon be here to collect me!

We may live in deepest Normandy but when it comes to our poubelles (bins) there is nothing provincial about us.

We have a poubelle verte into which we put anything we can't put into our poubelle bleue.

Into the poubelle bleue we put plastic, cardboard, newspapers, tin cans.

No glass bottles are allowed into a poubelle,  I have to drive them to the nearest bottle bank, except I don't go to the nearest one because there's a lady in the  house opposite the glass collector who twitches the curtains - I swear she keeps records on what everyone's drinking, so I drive my bottles along the valley to the next village where I hope no one knows me!

If, par malheur, we should put the wrong thing into the wrong poubelle, the dustmen may choose to name and shame by strapping the offending item onto the lid of our bin for all to see, and leaving the bin full.  Quelle honte!

For large items such as a broken down fridge, a no-longer-desired armchair etc we can either put them out on the pavement on two predetermined dates, spring and autumn, when the same dustmen come by to collect the monstres  or take them by car to the dechetterie (selective rubbish tip) .  The man at the dechetterie is very nice indeed, always happy to give a hand unloading my car, and doesn't think it at all strange when  I tape notes to things I leave behind explaining what's wrong with the item and suggesting ways it may still be useful.

A big thank you to Suzanne who is SOO right to make us feel responsible for what we're doing for the planet.  Please check out her site and see what great ideas other people are having.