Trash and the City

"Let's get together, yeah yeah yeah" to recycle - that's what the yellow bag says. Or at least, that's the idea. (The directly translation is, "let's sort to recycle.") I find "Trions Pour Recycler" to be particularly uninspiring, so I'm hoping the City of Paris picks up on my version.

Anyway. Trash bags in public places are so mundane that it's easy to ignore them, but they're worth paying attention to. Bags seem so much more efficient and more hygienic than cans. No more smelly, unwashed plastic bins, no more rusting metal containers. Their colors help them stand out just enough ("hey! look over here! we want your trash!") but not so much that they distract from their surroundings.

This was probably not the logic of whoever instated bags in place of cans. The changeover happened the day after 9/11, and may have been inspired by memories of a 1996 terrorist attack in the Paris métro that killed two.

As Maggie points out, the downside is that SDFs (sans domicile fixe, aka the homeless) routinely break the bottoms of the recycling bags to take out glass bottles and aluminum cans, leaving behind piles of refuse.

Still, I'm a big fan (or at least, as much of a fan as one can be of such things). I wonder, though. If the switch from cans to bags took place in Boston, would I notice?