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Jul 14, 2018

Even more about garbage: the adventure

A friend of mine had some pretty bad habits from living with her parents and relying on them as a cleaning service. Mild depression mixed with living on her own meant that her poor apartment was almost always a disaster. She never wanted anyone over for fear of embarrassment about her situation. At some point, we decided enough was enough and I spent some time trying to help her get her place back to a point of being able to live in it. The problem was that she had such a pile-up of plastic bottles, papers and just general rubbish we couldn't really get into her apartment to organize.

Even more about garbage: the adventure photo

Imagine this times three years.


So that is what we tackled first. All of her burnable garbage went out the door that first day. We were lucky. The next day was burnables. We were however unlucky in that the previous day had been recyclables. Our bad timing meant that we then had a mountain of bags of rubbish to be recycled at her genkan and a two-week wait before we could set it out. I wanted to begin the task of tackling her dirty dishes and personal belongs so we just couldn't wait that long. Besides, she couldn't get out of her door to go to work in the morning if we left it there. That was where our grand adventure began. I knew there were recycling stations outside the grocery store near my apartment, about a 20-minute bike ride from her house. Like circus stunts women, we loaded our bikes with bags and bags of plastic bottles. I remember somehow holding on to three to four bags in each hand while trying to precariously bike along the narrow streets. We had to stop several times to pick up a bag that fell and at some point, one of the bags ripped! Soda bottles went every direction and it took us a while to figure out what to do. Just around the corner was a convenience store with bins right out front. We casually and nonchalantly made several billion trips from our bikes to the kombini until the ripped bag’s contents were all gone. Hauling the remaining dozen or so bags back on our bikes, we headed off. Finally, we had made it to the supermarket and deposited our haul in the proper recycle bin. Exhausted and ready to call it quits for the night, we headed back to her apartment feeling accomplished at what we had done. That is when we both noticed the sign shining brightly for the grocery store a stone's throw away from her apartment. Without needing to say anything to each other we both went to look and low and behold there were recycling bins right there, walking distance from her place.



edthethe

edthethe

American step mom with beautiful Brazilian babies. Raising them in Japan. I'm a crafter too


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