Recycling in Paris

Now that the holiday season is finally over, it’s back to routine.  Sort of.   My daughter has the good fortune to be attending NYU’s Paris campus this semester (ooh la la!).  So, this week I transported her and all her clothes, shoes, and other accoutrement necessary for a 19-year-old female living in France for 4 months.  What a life.  She is excited to be living in her own apartment and basically having no oversight except for her own good judgment.  The bird is out of the nest.

This is my first time in Paris, and it’s been pleasing to find this city both similar and different at once.  Cities are cities, and I’m comfortable in urban environments, having been raised less than an hour from Manhattan and having lived in Boston or Chicago for most of my adult life (my suburban experiment in Barrington aside).  Even in January, Paris is pretty city and not too wintery, so we’ve done lots of walking and shopping and pastry-eating.   It is hard, however, to find cheap, readily accessible coffee (no Dunkin’ Donuts here!), something over which we both have suffered.

It’s also interesting to notice the different “green” behaviors of Parisians and what we can learn from them.  A recycling program does exist here, and is similar to ours.  According to the City of Paris website, recyclable items are separated [glass and “other”, which includes paper, metal, and #1 (PET) and #2 (HDPE) plastic] and are picked up twice a week.  Other plastics and food waste are not recycled.  The city also places huge plastic containers on street corners for the deposit of glass; particularly advertized for wine bottles (of course; see picture).  However, as in cities in the U.S., the collection of recyclables in public areas appears to be weak.  

The city recently established multiple recycling areas at parks throughout the city for spent Christmas trees; a big pile of which I observed (see picture).  In this program, the trees are crushed and composted, with the finished compost used to enrich soil in local parks. 

The city is recently started a trial program for on-site composting of kitchen and garden waste at a few hundred multi-residential sites with backyards or other open ground.  Large composting bins are dug slightly into the ground and compostable material from the building residents is disposed within in.  If Google Translator didn’t fail me, the program is administered by a volunteer in the building and the resulting compost is used to amend the property’s gardens and landscaped beds.  Nice idea!

Another great “environmental” program in Paris is a city-wide bike rental system, wherein for a small fee (roughly $25 to $50 a year, plus a fee for time used past 30 or 45 minutes, depending on the program one buys), one can rent a bike stationed at one of more than 1,400 automated stations across the city and can return it to any other station (again, see picture).  It’s a great program for a city set up well for bicycling, as Paris is, and I saw many people using it.  My daughter is planning to take advantage of it, as well.

These great programs aside, I can say with absolute certainty that, although a pet waste collection law has been in effect in Paris since 2002, it is routinely ignored (I’ve spared you any picture of this).  Dodging doggy deposits while walking in the city is an ability that must be quickly learned lest odeur de merde de chien follow you everywhere. 

Well, I guess habits are hard to learn or break, be it recycling soda bottles, picking up after your pet, or composting food waste.  And we’ll soon have a new opportunity in Rhode Island to increase our recycling skills.  

Upgrading of the Central Landfill recycling facility is allowing Rhode Island to launch a new recycling program, projected to commence in April 2012.  We will no longer need to separate out recyclables; all materials can be combined in one bin and will be sorted at the facility by optical scanners.  More importantly, we will reportedly now be able to recycle all plastics (#1 through #7).  Thank goodness for that; I can barely read the little triangles on the bottom of bottles any more. 

This increase in recycling services will be good in many ways.  For environmental purposes, of course, but it will also save our town (and us taxpayers) money, since the town has to pay a fee for disposal of non-recyclables but there is no fee for recycled material.  In addition, since the RI Resource Recovery Corporation shares the profits for selling recyclable material, the more we recycle, the more money the town can get back.

Environmentally-supportive behavior is learned and takes time and patience, but it’s good to see continuing improvements, both here and abroad.  I’ve improved my side-stepping skills while here (a talent that will, unfortunately, help me in Barrington), and am looking forward to increasing my recycling with the new Rhode Island program.  I urge you to take the new program to heart as well.