[toxik]

Hear hear. And even then, plastic grocery bags are part of a beautiful, closed system of becoming trash bags. Now I have to go to the store, buy a literal roll of plastic bags, and carry it home in a non-plastic bag, then throw my garbage in this one-time-use garbage bag.

Congratulations! Progress has been made at you.

[mschild]

Do you have to use bags or do just do it because you've always done it?

We have similar recycling setup in Germany. I don't use bags for any of them.

[toxik]

We are not allowed to throw trash without bags for obvious reasons. I'm not sure I understand what you even mean by that.

[Filligree]

What are the obvious reasons? Doesn't your trash go in a trash can?

[toxik]

Where do you empty your trash can?

Let’s say you throw away something sticky, maybe a dirty diaper, or something else. You don’t want to get that stuff on your own trash can, and the garbage collectors don’t want to deal with soiled garbage bins either. It is simply about sanity, residues and stuff attracts rodents and other pests.

Both in apartment buildings and in houses with trash collection, the rule is that you put the trash in bags.

[mschild]

All buildings have larger bins (between 240 and 1100 litres) on the outside or in a specified area. Those are picked up by the waste companies. There is no need to specifically place waste into a bag. You can just put it straight into the container.

We generally don't have all that much super sticky trash. We also simply clean our bins when needed. Our organic waste bin, for example is simply lined with an unbleached kitchen paper towel that gets dumped into the container as well.

[zeta0134]

Where I live, the large trash bin is collected by a small company that sends non standardized trucks. The workers open the bin and manually empty it, one bag at a time, by hand.

Not everyone lives in a big city. I'm not sure what I could put my garbage in to make their job easier other than some sort of bag. Find me a non-plastic bag that can fulfill this purpose and we'll have a reasonable solution. But since there is literally no other trash collection game in town, for now, the bags stay. I'll find other ways to reduce my plastic consumption, but I don't expect to fully eliminate it.