Biomüll – the bane of my existence

So I recycle.  I’m pretty diligent about knowing what’s recyclable and what’s not, but the Germans take this to a whole new level.  In fact, there’s a blog for my dorm, and the first post that the Tutor for our dorm put up, was about how to separate your garbage.  We had an entire hour in my class (well maybe not quite an hour, but whatever) about how to separate your garbage.  Apparently foreigners just don’t get this concept.  But really, what’s so hard about reading the directions and following them.  Seriously.



In my dorm we have the option of separating our Restmüll – which is everything that doesn’t fit into the other categories – from our Biomüll – which is everything compostable.  But really it’s too much of a pain the ass to do that, plus we only have one container for Bio- and Restmüll so we just put it altogether and throw it in the Restmüll.  This is fine with me, but it means keeping a bag of rotting food crap under the sink until we are ready to throw it out.  It also means that flies start to congregate in the kitchen – especially since the windows are always open.

Today somebody finally took the garbage from under the sink out because it was getting to be too much.  There were little baby flies everywhere as well as big black flies.  Argh…seriously people.  This could have been taken out earlier, but not by me, because I had already taken the paper out to the curb earlier in the week, and emptied the yellow bag where we put all of our packaging materials and everything that doesn’t go on the glass, paper, etc…

These flies are the reason why Biomüll is a catastrophe in a dorm with 6 or more people.  Nobody thinks it’s their responsibility and they only take care of it once the flies become a problem.  But really, it needs to be taken care of BEFORE the flies start to really congregate, because those little bastards breed like crazy and by the time you notice them it’s too late.  Some of my friends have “cleaning plans” for their floors that indicate who is to do what – this includes dishes, garbage, etc.  We do not have that, but I think it would be a good idea.  Not that anyone would actually follow it mind you, but at least someone would be written down as responsible for it and would take care of it.  Whatever, I’ll take the garbage out once a week if it means not having to deal with flies and gnats every day.  Blech.