what ete! you just throw stuff in the waste can or trash? you don't stop and think, does this go in the blue can? or the green one? can i trash this, or do i need to recycle it? and into which pile does it go?
we don't have dust bins (we have bins, but they are for storing good stuff.. Costco might have a bin of X, at some sort of wonderful costco price)and since coal is hardly used for residential heating any more, we also, for the most part don't have ash cans (think, correctly ashcans)-
i remember as a child, in ireland, my grandparents 'recycled' too, and had one can for ashes, (they heated with coal) one for trash and one for 'food waste' (that was collected by the pig man)
when my mom was on a rage, and having a general clean up, she threated (not idly!) to put stuff into (or out with) the garbage.
i would call binbags, garbage bags.. the big black ones are 'leaf bags' (you can't burn fallen foliage in most of US)--Leaf bags had special pick ups-they got recylced by the parks department.
for a big clean up, some rent a dumpster (a skip) and some apartments (like mine) have a 'trash chute' that loads the garbage into small dumpsters (on wheels) that are rolled in and out as they fill up.
