SWITZERLAND | How The Swiss Manage Garbage! (how to + demo)

hey guys welcome back to how to Switzerland Sarah here today and I'm going to be talking about so there's so exciting guys garbage and recycling and it's Switzerland I think it's kind of a kissy but anyways moving so many emails and messages and comments of people that are like hey I found your channel I love you guys I love watching your videos because I'm about to move here which is so exciting congratulations if you're one of those people but they want to know like the real basics so since so many people have been asking it about these basics we decided we're gonna start a little mini series called switzerland-based thanks so in this series we're gonna just cover all of the little things like getting rid of garbage paying bills grocery shopping all sorts of those kinds of tips so anywho let's get into it how do I get rid of garbage and recycle in Switzerland so I grew up in the u.s. and for us getting rid of garbage was basically everything goes in one garbage bag that goes to the end of the street and you might have a bin where you throw everything that is recyclable in there like glass and bottle and everything and that just all those they're all to the end of your streets and that's it but it's not like that here it takes a lot of I guess consumer citizen initiative to run the recycling system properly so let's talk about it first thing you need to know about garbage Thanks okay this is for me the strangest thing when I moved here there is no like glad scented cushion then like 20 different brands of garbage bags that is not a thing the garbage bags are issued I guess by the city by the country by the stopped by the city so these are fun stocked the zurich the garbage and recycling people issue these so these are what you have to use if you live in a different canton then zurich if you live in a certain if you live in vollis whatever they're all going to look different they're gonna be different colors but it's one color per light you know thing all those those very bags are this color they look like this so this is called the zoe sock beauty self Zippy's knock yeah again judy suck Zoe sock and this is 35 liters you're probably gonna need 35 meters that's standard for households but they do come in sizes but more than likely your apartment came with a built-in trashcan as most Swiss apartments do and it's formatted to fit this 35 litre bag so what's the deal with these the point of these banks is they're very expensive okay so I think that this in a roll of 10 and these cost one franc 70 per garbage bag so I don't think change rate is right now but I'll pop it in right here so one franc 70 that's this much in US Dollars and yeah that's that's pretty expensive so the point of these being so expensive is to get you to recycle and I can tell you it works because if you're trying to throw away one of these every single day with all your waste it's gonna add up really really quickly when you can just you know take advantage of the recycling system that is put in place here Matthias is gonna jump in because we have to learn some German so where do we find these bags and how do we ask in German okay so when you go into the grocery store you want to go straight to the check up and then you can ask the person to cashier if you would like to have some garbage bags so I want to show you how the conversation looks like in Swiss German Grisi is briefly not for sex okay we fill it Abruzzi April 5th really terrible sec okay transparent repeat it so congratulations you've got your hands on these garbage bags don't feel bad if it's confusing at the beginning when I first moved here I was too scared or embarrassed to ask because I just didn't know how to talk to people but you'll figure it out you'll get more comfortable with it and now let's talk about what does not go in here okay what does not go in here I have a list and then I wanted to make sure I got everything okay which is not going here compost P et bottles any sort of recyclable recyclable bottles including from your bathroom like shampoo soap dispensers except rub glass cardboard paper metal aluminum batteries other toxic items this includes like water filtration cartridges and things like that that does not go in here so doesn't go in here where does it go which we'll show you right now this is our recycling station it doesn't look that pretty but it does its job and here I'm going to show you like these different kinds of bottles that we used up if you don't know if it's recyclable just look at the label if you see this label it is recyclable it's very important to notice like what kind of plastic it is for example PT goes into a different bin than PE or PG and you'll typically have PT bottles are these so in Switzerland almost everybody drinks sparkling water a lot of people so you see a lot of these bulbs you know the label let me zoom in for you guys yep so it's PE tea and it's recyclable exactly ok let's go on to metal and glass here we have almond corn what do you see like a dosing yeah yeah I can I guess yeah Cory can and here you can see it is recyclable so here we have very important in switched on you actually separated by color so we have green glass you separate being glass from white glass and also we have brown glass and you all separated Emily from in different bins but so as you can see these are these are different colors at home throw them all in the same bag but at the recycling station you have to separate them next thing we hear we have cardboard and also this is where also paper goes in but we don't have any paper right now when we're in goodness to notice with cardboard like old like plastic insert needs to be separated so you need to keep it separate and once a month there's a cardboard and paper collection coming and then you need to separate themselves all the copper goes together and when the paper goes together and very important we need to pack together and tie the twine yeah so we can put in a picture here of how it looks but cardboard and paper gets picked up on separate days so yes you need to lock it up but with real if we have to type in our street name and number and then it shows like when they will come and it's different for every crime so it's like over every section in in suruc but a better tip is just check the street and when you see piles of cardboard put out your cardboard when you see piles of paper put out your paper but yeah you gotta tie it up with time super important and then garbage we'll show you where that goes as well time to go get rid of some recycling here we go okay so at our apartment we throw this away just in a container right outside of our building but it can be different in some parts of Switzerland you put it even at the street for collection but you definitely want to look for somewhere designated for that you can probably find that info online by the way it's not like illegal to put recyclables in here it's it's just expensive but I should point that out it's not like illegal to be plastic in here so there you see only for I'm sorry only for zoo the sacks okay or clean sir yes see and everyone's following the rules y'all so you might be asking hey can't I just put a regular cheap trash bag in there and the answer is I don't I don't know I'm not gonna advise you to do that but I've lived in some apartments in Switzerland where the garbage is locked and has surveillance cameras but I wouldn't do that I'm emigrant here I'm trying to follow the rules but yeah don't do that so here we are at a I guess recycling point and Zurich this is a very large one like these containers are large sorry I collect uphill they might be smaller or look slightly different but all in all this is basically what it looks like so you've got one for metal and it tells you in German this belongs aluminum foil etc excetra pans little pieces of metal like here and this doesn't belong as it tells you there so I'm not going to translate everything for you guys today but you just chuck it in there and then we have again color is important Matthias mentioned you got to separate the colors this is green glass and oh and blue red undefined so this is green glass and blue red and undefined yeah that's true if you don't know what color it goes in there so you know bottles jelly jars mason jars so then white glass so that's the clear you know and same thing and brown okay so if it's not white or brown it goes in the green so you're probably asking yourself like where is the plastic on you can actually go to a grocery store and there's a big thing where you have to sort by ppt and other materials so let's get this done and afterwards we'll go to the grocery store and show you that so this is a pasta sauce a char and it's important that you take the lid off do as the late doesn't go into the glass yeah we just learned that so super important also what's important there are times you're allowed to do this because this is this is no easy guys so you have to obey the time that you can do it oh here you go about to get rid off from Monday till Saturday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays it's not allowed and also on holidays it's not allowed to get rid of exactly and really you again follow the rules because people will let you know if you're doing something wrong somebody might come out and tell you off so follow the rules people want quiet during those hours and yeah right now we're gonna go get rid of our plastic bottles we really need to get like a SodaStream machine or something to make less plastic bottles I just can't give up sparkling water but anyways we've lived in some places like Germany we were in Sweden for a summer and you actually get paid like you get money on the spot to get them to give the bottles back unfortunately they don't do that in Swift and you don't get any money or credit towards your purchase at the grocery store we just do it to you know save money save money your cycle so whistlin has one of the highest recycling rates in the world I think I heard that 80% plastic bottles are reclaimed in Switzerland incredible [Music] oh isn't this one cute okay this is a recycling station inside us was grocery store sorry it's a little bit poorly late so there are all sorts of containers this is for I guess like little co2 cartridges we have some place for batteries this is for rid of filters this is for lightbulbs Matthias is doing the PBT plastic you can see it's marked here for PE T bottles so it's made with the drink bottles then you have other other kinds of plastic like your laundry soap milk etc right in there that's it guys that is how it would work so that was a little bit odd to bring it into the grocery store I had never seen that before as an American but you get used to it thank you guys so much for watching I hope you found this video helpful or enjoyable if you did give it a thumbs up if you want to see more switzerland basics videos let us know in the comments down below leave your specific requests we're gonna try to address your specific requests and that's it that's it job [Music]

Channel: How To Switzerland

Views: 56,206

Rating: 4.9480762 out of 5

Keywords: switzerland, swiss, how to, life in switzerland, move to switzerland, moving to switzerland, sarah nourse, sarah nurse, sara nourse, swiss life

Id: Knfq6fcmTH8

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 30 2019