My contribution to this rubbish edition of The Brussels Times Magazine is to invite you back to the days before multicoloured bags bulging with various kinds of household waste started literally littering the city’s pavements in a riot of orange, yellow and electric blue plastic.
But first: what a joy the modern era of rubbish is!
Every week on various collection days those colourful bulging bags brighten up our streets, at least until gangs of crows inevitably arrive to rip open the orange food waste bag to create tasty meals out of our leftovers before the dustcart arrives.
I have almost as much admiration for those canny crows as for the rubbish collection crews who whizz down the street whistling and swinging from the back of the cart as if they’re in a Broadway musical – especially for those who jump down and fling the bags through the air into the still-rolling truck as if it’s an Olympic sport.
No wonder Belgium is highly ranked in the field of rubbish disposal coupled with state-of-the-art levels of recycling.
When I boasted to a London-based relative about our five-or-more bag system she looked crestfallen: “We’ve only got two types of rubbish bags in our area, she wailed. “A transparent bag for paper, cardboard, yoghurt pots and plastic bottles - with their tops still on- and tinfoil, but only if it’s not scrunched up. Everything else, she said, goes into a black bag.
In my wide-ranging survey of a handful of other people’s experiences of their own domestic national or regional rubbish programmes, it was a mixed story, sometimes verging on a game of binbag one-upmanship.
Waste of space
Back here in the garbage collection mecca of Brussels, my favourite tale came from someone whose domestic rubbish collection system is linked with language borders, which produces a bonus of double opportunities for putting out bags every week.
It’s a bit complicated. This person lived for years in a street with two rows of houses on the same side. One row is parallel with the road and the second row is at the back with gardens in between. The first row of houses is accessed directly from the pavement in the normal way, but the second row can only be reached by long driveways between every two houses in the front row.
These are close neighbours, but the front-rowers live in Sterrebeek (part of Zaventem), and the second-rowers are in Wezembeek-Oppem, because the commune border lies between the two rows.
To make it more interesting, the two communes translate the Flemish name of the same street differently. In Sterrebeek, it’s called Hippodroomlaan, but in Wezembeek it’s Renbaanlaan.
So my source, who lived at 44 Hippodroomlaan, Steerbeek had a postbox right next to that of her neighbour, who lived at 46 Renbaanlaan, Wezembeek,
“Each commune has its own rubbish collection schedule, so while my rubbish was picked up on Tuesdays, my neighbour’s was picked up on Thursdays, number 44’s rubbish collection day is Tuesday, and it is Thursday for the person next door.
One piece of harmonisation brings a bonus to these residents: the rubbish system in both communes happens to be run by the same company, so both sides of this linguistic border use the same rubbish bags, meaning that householders can put out rubbish twice a week if they need to, using the days for both Sterrebeek and Wezembeek.
But enough about the present. Let’s look at a few true Close Encounters of the Rubbish Kind.
1 - RIP Tiger
Tiger was one of three cats that joined the Meade household in the Belgian countryside in the early 1980s. Tiger was always the odd one out: scruffy, scatty and prone to disappear in the nearby forest for days at a time, although he always came back eventually. But in 1986, when we returned from a brief holiday (the other two cats were in kennels), Tiger seemed to have vanished for good.
About two months later there was a scratching at the front door one morning and there he was, fatter than before but his fur was mangey and within days he had quietly expired under a bush in the garden. By the time I found him, rigor mortis had set in, his legs were splayed out and when I tried to wrestle his body into a black rubbish bag, his post-mortem limbs and claws virtually shredded the plastic. I left him under the bush, so the kids didn’t see him.
A couple of days later I was at home alone when I heard the weekly dustbin collection cart rumbling down the road, slowing to pick up our routine household rubbish. A lightbulb popped into my head as I rushed outside, grabbing Tiger’s corpse from under the bush.
When the cart was moving off after picking up our normal rubbish, I trotted as close as I could without being spotted and then used a frisbee-esque throwing movement to toss Tiger into the back, where all varieties of waste were being mashed together by a toothy mechanical claw, as was the norm in those days.
Like everything else at the time, Tiger was not destined to be recycled. I like to think that, given his free-wheelin’ lifestyle, it was the ending that he would have wanted.
2 - Going Nuclear
One day in 1993 a man whose overalls identified him as a Green man turned up on the doorstep and handed me a green plastic box. In fact, it was a Green green plastic box. When I looked puzzled, he explained that he was leaving the box with us so that we could put our nuclear waste in it. It was a new service.
I explained that we hadn’t got any nuclear waste and he said that was no problem because the Green green box was for anything a bit dangerous or leaky, like an old car battery and that sort of thing.
I told him that, as luck would have it, I had got three old car batteries in the garage so I could do with three green Green boxes…
Oh no, said the Green man, only one box per household, those are the rules. But I insisted that not many people would be hoarding old car batteries so why not give me a couple of boxes extra to take up the slack?
But it was not to be. The system couldn’t cope with that kind of disruption, so it was one box per household. I asked what I should do with the other two old car batteries. He said the obvious thing was to wait until he visited again one day for the second one. I asked him if he would give me two boxes on that occasion to save him from visiting a third time. No no, he replied, because it’s one per box per household per visit.
Trouble is, he never came back ever again, and I can’t now remember if the Green van the Green man was driving was even green…
3 Crime and punishment
In late November 1992, a man we shall call Mr X walked into his local police station near the centre of Brussels to report a crime. In his own words, here is the full story:
Mr X: There was a break-in at my apartment and a few things were stolen so I reported the incident. I filled in a few forms and then left, knowing that the search for the burglar was in good hands.
Me: So, what happened next?
Mr X: Nothing. Not a dicky bird. I didn’t hear anything until I went back to the police station.
Me: To check on progress?
Mr X: No. To report another burglary, about four weeks after the first one!
Me: Oh no! What did the police say?
Mr X: They were helpful. We did the whole ‘proces verbal’ thing and then they put my dossier in a file marked FU 2 and promised a full investigation.
Me: What does FU 2 stand for?
Mr X: I don’t know, but it certainly reflected my own view when nothing happened for a few more weeks until…
Me: Until?
Me: Until two policemen arrived at my place one morning and asked if I was Mr X. I said I was. I thought they’d come to tell me the burglar had been apprehended and that they’d found my stolen things.
Me: Had they?
Mr X: No. One of them was waving a crumpled-up envelope smeared with what looked like old gooey cheese. With my name and address on it.
Me: On the gooey cheese?
Mr X: No. On the front of the envelope. He asked me to accompany them outside to a rubbish bag on the pavement. I immediately recognised it as mine.
Me: Someone had tried to steal your rubbish bag?
Mr X: No. The very opposite: the dustmen had refused to take it away because I’d put out it for collection a day early.
Me: And the policemen had ripped open your rubbish bag to try to identify who had put it out on the wrong day?
Mr X: Exactly. They said it was illegal to leave rubbish out except on the day of collection but because they were feeling generous, they wouldn’t arrest me on this occasion but they wouldn’t be so nice if I made the me mistake again.
Me: So you were quite grateful…
Mr X: Oh absolutely. And as luck would have it, they were from the same police station investigating the two break-ins at my apartment.
Me: Very fortunate.
Mr X: Yes. As they were leaving, I asked them if they knew of any progress in the investigation. They said they were sorry, but their focus was on tracking down rubbish bag offenders and they were not up to speed with serious crime cases. So I said FU 2, hoping that it would keep my burglary case file in the front of their minds.
Me: Have you heard anything since?
Mr X: No, but if there’s no result soon, I know I can get police attention by leaving out another rubbish bag on the wrong day…
