City of Light Green Bins & Overflowing Trash
For the last few weeks, Paris has been slowly turning into a landfill. Ever since fonctionnaires, or civil servants, went on strike to protest the government’s retirement age reforms, rubbish hasn’t been collected in 10 of the capital’s 20 arrondissements. The result is that, over the course of a month, the piles of trash have grown larger and larger, a visual testimony to public indignation. On some of the narrower footpaths, the rubbish has begun to take up so much real estate that you’re forced to walk on the road. On other streets, you can find plastic soda bottles blowing in the wind, laying to rest the question of how many roads a man must walk down once and for all.The ubiquity of these trash isles in Île-de-France means that the question of where to dispose of rubbish in a world of overflowing bins has become largely moot. The other day I saw a woman walk out of a building with a rubbish bag in one hand, take one step to her left, before dumping it into a pile of trash next to the door. It was comical to see, but it made sense: when there are no available rubbish bins, everywhere is a rubbish bin. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve noticed that the rubbish piles are larger outside cafes and restaurants. While households might produce their fair share of trash, their production, as it were, pales in comparison with big business. Outside a supermarket, you can find piles of orange peels, while fast food chains have empty burger wrappers piled high near their entrances. At the same…
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