New Brown Bins

Recycling is a bigger deal here than in the USA.  At least compared to California and Georgia.  When I moved here I had to learn to separate waste.  Every couple of blocks you'll find coloured bins to sort paper, plastics, glass, etc.

The blue bin is for paper so paper wrappers, packaging, newspapers, magazines, cardboard boxes, books, and office documents.  Receipts do not go in the blue bin.  You can't put anything in the blue bin that is wet, waxed, or greasy which means no pizza boxes.

The green bin is for coloured glass.  White bins are for clear glass.  Ceramics, porcelain and china can not be put in the glass bins.  

The yellow bin is for plastics.  In Brno, the yellow bins are also for the cartons used for milk and juice.  I recently found out that toothpaste tubes can't be placed in the yellow bin because the tubes are often lined with aluminium and contain leftover toothpaste.    

This week Brno put out 1000 (240 litre / 63.5 gallon) brown bins and 35 large (15.000 litre / 3,963 gallon) containers.  The brown bins are for bio waste so people can dispose of fruit and vegetable peels, tea bags, and coffee waste.  I read that eggshells and nutshells should not be put in the brown bins which seems counterintuitive to me.  Also, in Germany eggshells do go in the bio waste containers.

Czechland recycles 33,3% of its municipal waste which is short of the EU average of 47,7%.  Each of the countries surrounding Czechia recycles more.  Germany recycles 66,7%, followed by Austria at 58,2%, Slovakia at 38,5% and Poland at 34,1%.

When I grew up in California each house had small blue bins to collect recycling and we put these out on the sidewalk for the trash men to collect.  One bin was for newspaper.  Another was for plastic.  According to my mom, the newspaper bin was also for glass too but I don't remember that.