The Vaugeries of Recycling in Le Gros Chigy

I suspect this is some kind of aptitude test for foreigners trying to live in France, that the locals seem to be part of by brushing off enquiries implying its obvious. This post will then also act as operating information for people staying in The House at Le Gros Chigy.

Each house, except if you aren't a permanent resident which is the subject for another post, gets 2 bins,

photo by ChigyTweet
(Creative Commons Some Limitations License)

one with a yellow lid and the other with no distinctive colour. The yellow topped bin has the following label attached.


This seems to divide garbage into 3 parts but you are only given two bins! But then the yellow background of the items on the top left makes you realise that these items must belong in the yellow topped bin.

But look at this a bit more closely and it seems a bit mixed up as some plastic bottles seem OK for the yellow but others are classified "non!". Although we have paper in the left half, we seem to have a range of cardboard boxes being destined for the yellow bin, milk bottles are OK for the yellow but yogurt tubs not, plastic bottles are fine so long as you collapse them but plastic shrinkwrap films not and hidden away small in the middle seem to be tins and aluminium pans.

The instructions also say if in doubt don't put something in the yellow bin. But at the village communal bins, which you have to use if you don't get a bin, you are exhorted to sort/recycle!

The non! bottles turn out to be oil and toxic chemical bottles and the way to make sense of it is to see the yellow bin as containing everything that can be recycled, excepting glass containers and paper which you are expected to take to separate recycling bins in the area. So don't see the yellow bin as the end of recycling, but rather as a collection of recyclable material that will be sorted and recycled by those who collect the contents.