The dechetterie, an experience not to be missed!

Every country in Europe has it's own rules & regulations regarding recycling, it seems.

When we first moved to France, almost 13 years ago, our household garbage was collected every 2 weeks (!) after a couple of years this changed to weekly.

There were also twice yearly collections of old/unwanted metal items. These had to be placed in the street for collection and reminded us of the "sperrmuhl" collections we enjoyed when we lived in Bavaria

Things remained that way for a long time and then we received a letter telling of a special card/permis that we could obtain from "la mairie" which would entitle us to use the local "dechetterie" or as we like to refer to it "the dump".

This certainly opened up a new world of special containers in which we could dispose of all those tricky items we had stashed in the outbuildings. Hazardous products such as old paint cans & aerosols, polysterene chips (the bane of my life), unwanted clothing, broken electrical items and much much more, the list was endless.

The "dechetterie" is very strictly operated by the "Gardien" who demands to see your "permis" when you arrive and then watches like a hawk to make sure that, heaven forfend, you place something in the wrong container.

So.....we loaded up the car at the weekend and went to the dump and as is the case with almost everything we do these days I captured the moment with my trusty Nikon Coolpix for a scrapbook LO. I think it turned out quite well, n'est pas.

I'll tell you about the bottle bank another day..............................