Green Dutch living

*Hi everyone--I just sent out our blog address to a b-jillion folks and realized that this most recent entry is a banal treatise on Dutch trash. SO, if you've just found us, scroll to the bottom entry and start from there. Then, if you're still interested, read about how we compost.* :)
Ellie's sleeping and I just finished bringing in our compost bin. I love that Maastricht has city-wide composting, with little green bins emptied into the compost truck at your doorstep each Wednesday morning. We generate very little trash here. We pay 1 Euro per Maastricht trash bag (about $1.33), which is a kitchen-sized, 13 gallon, city-approved bag that is picked up for free. (You therefore pay up-front for trash service by buying the bags themselves, which is an incentive to keep your trash minimal.) Even with diapers, we don't fill one bag in a week. Packaging in general is much tighter (or non-existent) and recyclable. If you don't bring a bag to the grocery store, you must buy one there as they aren't provided. There are just a few places in the city that have food or coffee to-go, as the idea is for people to sit and drink/eat together. People of all ages are out--from infants to the elderly, people are just together and less compartmentalized by age as in the U.S. The city keeps the common spaces quite clean, the streets are swept daily, the parks are beautiful, the statues, ruins and ancient monuments maintained, the libraries well-equipped and bustling. As I've said before, people bike and walk more than they drive, so there's a sense in which you're among your neighbors much more. There is a strong civic ethic, community feel. So while living spaces are small (think Ikea-like apartment), I don't think people feel hemmed in. But I'll reassess this when it's winter here. :) In other nerdy news, I finished Harry Potter 7 on Monday, and Ryan's nearly finished. Quite bittersweet--would love to talk about it with those of you who read as rabidly as I did. We move into our *real* apartment on Friday afternoon. This is a welcome move for many reasons, not least of which is our current apartment's toilet isn't working and we are bucket flushing. Good thing I've had years of bucket flushing practice! Love to you all!
By the way, if you want to enlarge any picture, just click on it.