Red, Yellow, Green

Kia Ora!

As we left Austin, Texas in March, our town was just beginning to add compost bins to the weekly refuse collection. Initially, the plan was rolled out in a small section of the city. I thought this was smart, innovative, and very Austin. I like to think of Austin as on the cutting edge of good ideas in preservation of the environment.

I was pleased and rather surprised to discover that Timaru is well ahead of Austin. They have already instituted that system of refuse collection. Our refuse carts are color coded. Red is for rubbish, yellow for recyclables, and green for compostables. When I compost for my own garden in Austin, I do not include meats or anything with fat in it. For large city operations, anything that breaks down--meat, fat, vegetative matter, limited paper--may be included. No plastic, so we wrap our compostable material in newspaper.

The green compost bin is put out every Tuesday night with either the rubbish or the recycle bin, each of which go out only every two weeks. The city trucks come by very early Wednesday morning to empty the bins, making quite a racket I might add. I say more power to them.

Rubbish, Recycle, Compost

Cheers,

Kiwi Traveler