One of the first things we learned about living in New Zealand is their rubbish collection. Rubbish is more commonly known in our country as garbage. So if you're having a conversation and you hear them declare that what you're saying is a load of rubbish, it's not a compliment. Bwahuhuhu!

For an orderly rubbish collection, you need two things: a council bag and a kiwi bin. Council bags are huge, yellow plastic bags where you place your non-recyclables in. It costs around $9.00 for 5 pieces, and can be bought at grocery stores (ask for it at the counter). You are allowed to load up to 15kg per bag. More guidelines are printed on the bag itself.


Next is the kiwi bin. If you're renting a flat, your landlord should give you one. But if it's not available, you can buy this for $10 at the Library. It's a green, plastic container into which you place your recyclables such as paper and bottles (plastic and glass).


There is a schedule for rubbish collection; you need to ask about this from your landlord, neighbor, or from information centers such as the library. In our case, it's on Mondays at around 8:30AM. We bring out our rubbish after 5:30PM on Sunday. The collection team for general rubbish collection is different from the recyclables team.

I believe that this method of rubbish segregation works because you have a visual of where to put your recyclables and non-recyclables. And since collection is once a week, people are motivated to dispose properly of their refuse or else they'd have a smelly kitchen or backyard.

Supporting the rubbish collection scheme are campaigns to make your own compost out of biodegradable stuff from the kitchen. Some gardening stores even offer tutorials and you can buy your supplies from them to start and sustain a worm farm of a compost heap.

The council bag and kiwi bin concept may not work in our country, but we can still follow a similar theme in garbage segregation and actively support backyard composting.

[cross-posted in watson.online/]

Starbucks is one of the more popular cafes around, and it has launched initiatives for providing clean, drinking water to impoverished countries. An article was written about this in USA Today.

The irony is, the same company is being criticized for wasting huge amounts of water. Here in New Zealand where a large number of areas still has drinkable tap water, this is indeed cause for alarm. Starbucks outlets have something called a dipper well where water continously flows during work hours at the rate of 10 liters a minute. This translates to 113 million liters a year in New Zealand alone. Read more about this at Stuff.

While the water left running is apparently for sanitation reasons, there has to be another way to clean up utensils and not let the milk foam build up. We do not have a limitless supply of drinking water.

Started in 2006, eDay was a community initiative with the goal of emphasizing the environmental impact of electronic trash. Many of these include outdated computers and printers.

eDay provides a venue for an organized effort to pool resources in collecting electronics trash and informing the public that such waste does not belong in landfills where they can pose hazards. Many of these can still be reused and recycled.

eDay is currently being observed in New Zealand only.