Dad, Dex and I are traveling in Europe. We'll be reporting back in the next few weeks on the latest and greenest from across the pond. The thing we've found is how different the whole green thing is in other countries.
Take recycling. We've been staying in Dartmouth, a little seaside town in England. But even here you can find recycling bins in the street and places where you can drop off old clothes.
And the English love their wheelie bins. They're the bins many people have to collect their trash. Some places even have a computer chip in them: it weighs the bin and they pay more for having their trash taken away, to get them to recycle more. They decorate them and disguise them. College students race in them.
I even found this in a BBC Web site, as part of a pretty funny feature on wheelie bins:
"The fact that the average wheelie bin is about four feet tall poses a problem for someone who has unintentionally dropped something in the bottom... Even with an arm outstretched, while clinging desperately to the edge with the other, the bottom of the bin will generally remain out of reach, unless further weight is pressed against the lip of the bin and the feet are partially or completely raised off of the floor. It is at this point, with head and torso stuffed into the bin and feet raised into the air, that one of two things is likely to happen. Either the individual involved will lose balance and fall into the bin; or the bin will tip forward and slam to the ground, taking the poor fool inside with it... The recommended method for getting something out of a wheelie bin is to see if there's anyone else nearby who might do it for you."
Ha!
