See title. I realized that trash collection systems sometimes differ between streets… so this is just about where you live, whether it is one specific street/building or an entire country. No need to mention exactly where if you don’t feel comfortable.
For where I currently live. Government makes colored trash bags (plastics/metals, papers, organic, general waste, etc) that people can buy at local supermarkets, and these bags are required for trash collection. On collection day we just… place the bags outside of the houses/apartments. Some places buy their own trash bins too, but they are rare.
The place I live in seem to take recycling very seriously. I’ve heard from colleagues that putting the wrong things in a bag sometimes result in the “trash police” sending a fine to where you live. Allegedly the police do that by looking at where your last letter/Amazon/random delivery address (in your paper recycling bag) was sent to…
My understanding is that it is a surprisingly effective recycling system… but with the downside that 1) the city doesn’t look particularly great on/after trash collection day, and 2) sometimes the local wildlife will rip open the trash bags
Edit: some more details regarding where I live if anyone is interested. Most people only use four colored bags that are collected per week: blue (plastic, metal, something else…), yellow (paper-based recyclables), white (“residual”, essentially non-recyclable items), and orange (kitchen waste). There are also bags for garden waste and heavy waste, but they are not picked up from residential addresses. Glass is either returned to the supermarket (beer bottles) or disposed of at specific dropoff bins. Things like batteries/electronics are specific, I just take them back to the store. There are also pink bags, but they are only used by businesses
USA, Virginia: My county does not have municipal trash collection, so we either haul our own trash to convenience centers, or pay a private service to pick it up. The landfill and convenience centers are run by a private company and it seems to work pretty well, except for recycling. The county only recycles paper/carboard, metal, and #1 and #2 plastic, and for #2 plastic the opening of the container must be narrower than the container. We don’t recycle glass or any other plastics. Apparently my neanderthal neighbors couldn’t be arsed to rinse out the containers and the people whose job it was to sort it out refused to accept any more recycling from us until we made changes. And most of the county still just tosses everything in the trash compactors. I think our county-wide recycling rate is just under 25%.
I like the system better than when I lived in a city where we had trash pickup. I can go drop off when I need to instead of missing trash day, having trash pile up waiting for trash day, or having it not picked up because it was “too heavy,” or some other reason. It doesn’t cost me anything other than gas, and we can usually combine the drop off with grocery shopping or other errands. I just wish we were better at recycling. My daughter lives in a city with single-stream recycling - all the trash and recycling goes in the same container and it gets automatically sorted at a processing facility.