From Across the Pond

About that every-other-week trash pickup

By Anne Pessala

Last spring, our family was in a flurry of activity preparing for my husband’s upcoming sabbatical from the Tufts physics department. When we told friends we’d be moving to Manchester, some were puzzled and said, “Can’t you just commute?” But we were relocating, not to New Hampshire or the Massachusetts coast, but to northern England. Halfway through our year in Britain, I’ve not only learned about our new home but also gotten a new perspective on some aspects of our life in Britain that I will share over the next few months. To start with, the most directly relevant: trash is only picked up twice a month.  

Every home in Manchester has four trash cans (or “bins” as I had to get used to calling them): green (yard waste and compost), blue (paper), brown (glass, metal, and plastic), and gray (everything else). We get off relatively easily, as I’ve heard about municipalities that have up to seven different receptacles. The trash collectors come every week, but they alternate pickup of the paper bin and all the others.

How has it gone, and what does it suggest about the potential for a similar schedule in Medford? Our trash bin is just over half the size of the standard Medford trash bin. But with all the food scraps going into the green bin and packaging going into recycling, having too much trash has rarely been an issue.  Cardboard turned out to be the bigger headache. Folding large boxes to fit the narrow bin (a third of the size of a Medford recycling cart) required Hulk-like strength.

I’ve been following the debate about reduced trash pickup, and saw some concerns that we don’t have to worry about. Laws discouraging single-use plastic packaging are strict here, so it is easier to avoid. We are a family of four, out of the diaper years when our trash footprint was considerably higher. The summers here don’t get quite as hot, although compost isn’t picked up weekly like it is in Medford so there is more time for the food waste to become fragrant. And while Manchester has its share of rodents, squirrels, and scavenging birds, Massachusetts seems questionably blessed with craftier animals. If raccoons ever make it over here, the British won’t know what hit them.  

But despite these caveats, twice-monthly trash pickup has been a nearly unnoticeable change in our lives. Now, getting your clothes dry? That’s another story.

Anne Pessala is a Medford resident who is spending some time in Manchester, England.