Zürich has a complicated solution to garbage management. Throwing stuff out is serious business in Switzerland and get it wrong and you’re gonna’ have hell to pay. It all starts with garbage bags. You can’t throw your leftovers and cellophane wrappers out in just any old bag. No, you need a ‘Zurisack’ (!). That’s a clever little combination of ‘Zurich’ and ‘Sack’ which let’s you know that this is the sack to throw stuff out in when making garbage in Zurich.
You pay by the bag, which at over $2 per kitchen size bag is expensive enough that you think twice before throwing things away. To get the bags, you have to go to the grocery store and, when at check-out, ask the nice person behind the register if she or he “haben sie zurisack”. If they do, you’re in luck. (The garbage bags must be a shoplifting target, because every store keeps them behind the cashier's counter). If you throw out anything in another bag, the fine (there is a fine for everything in Switzerland - they like rules) is 90 Swiss Francs. Garbage men are trained to go through offending bags and look for receipts or bills with your name on them so they know who the offender is.You would think this pricing concept would encourage recycling, but the recycling rules are so complex, it is impossible to figure out what to take where. After buying a ton of furniture from Ikea, we spent days trying to figure out what to do with the styrofoam and card board boxes. Finally, we found out we had to break all the boxes down and bundle them with twine. Then, we had to download a complex recycling schedule for different recycling products (some things you bundle and leave on the curb, some items you drop off at certain drop off points during certain hours, certain items you bring to the grocery store, etc). Unfortunately, we had just missed our two hour window of when the bundled up boxes had to be on the curb. So, we had to wait until the next month. We signed up for the reminder SMS (text message) from the Zurich recycling website. The time for our area was the first Thursday of the month from 7 to 9 AM. However, you can’t put it out the night before. We were so nervous we were going to oversleep that we barely slept the night before. We set the alarm extra early and took out the two huge bundles of card board that had been sitting in our living room for the entire month. We thought everything had gone according to plan, as we saw people across the street doing the same thing. We were shocked to find out it they were still there when we arrived home from work. The ones across the street were gone. Day after day went by and there they sat. Finally, we tried to contact the recycling department, but the language barrier made that a dead end. Finally, we couldn’t stand looking at it anymore when we entered or left the building, so we put it in the back of the building and it was picked up the following month.
We thought we were done, but there were no instructions on what to do with the styrofoam. It was collecting in our kitchen, along with bags full of paper, plastic milk bottles, scraps of wood, and metal coat hangers. Garbage we don’t know what to do with. Garbage that we are scared to throw out. Chris had an ingenious plan to load up an empty suitcase of styrofoam and took it back to New York with her on her last time back and dump it there. However, that was only one suitcase and she received some weird looks from the baggage screeners. We thought we could tell our guests to bring an extra suitcase to help us export garbage, but the word would get quickly and no one would want to visit us. We now realize why balconies and storage rooms in our building are filled with garbage.
For these reason, the Swiss are not keen on producing garbage. They do not even like to buy things that produce garbage, say a television that has a big cardboard box with a lot of styrafoam around it. Therefore, in order to protect the Swiss economy from meltdown caused by ‘I won’t buy anything cause if I do I have to throw something out’ paralysis, most grocery stores and department stores have a ‘garbage point.’ At these garbage points, which are located right after check out, you can unpack your television, throw all the cardboard and styrofoam and dump it all in a big crate, and walk out a happy person with your naked television.
Those readers who are less than ethical are probably asking youselves, ‘But Nelson’s, why don’t you just take your garbage to the local train station and dump everything in the garbage can there. You don’t have to pay for one of those dumb Zurisacks and you can get rid of your junk. It’s win win!’ No. No. It’s not. First, we tried that with some plastic bottles at the local kiosk and we got yelled at. We played dumb and got away without a fine. Second, the Swiss are on to this and all garbage cans are either padlocked or have an opening only large enough for a can of Coke Light (American friends: this is their version of Diet Coke. Apparently Coke Light is cooler to say than Diet Coke. Third, someone will see you do this. You might not see them, but they will see you. Throw your garbage out the right way and nobody gets hurt.
