I read on various sources (Incl. Basel city council website) that there are no garbage containers in Basel appartment buildings. Instead, residents must place their garbage bags on the street on specific days and specific timetables. Dropping bags outside the designated timetables will result in a fine.
I was wondering how do Basel residents manage this? Do they keep the garbage in their homes for a long time (think if you have to fly abroad for one month, your flight is on a Monday, but you can only drop the garbage on Tuesday)
Isn't this a major health and safety hazard? How do they manage to keep their appartments safe and clean?
Some buildings do have outside garbage containers - both my previous and current flat have this. This tends to be newer blocks though, and it‘s true that in most places you simply put it out on the street. Things you can do:
- The garbage is collected twice a week (normally, some exceptions for public holidays) and your area will be assigned either Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday. Look at the zone map online and figure out where your nearest switch point is - it‘s usually not too far away - and then you can simply put it outside on the street there if you need to dispose on one of the days assigned to another zone.
- In some buildings, it seems to be the norm to leave it in the inside hallway outside your flat and ask a neighbour to put it out for you on the next garbage day. I would try to avoid this personally as these places always seem to have stinky hallways, but I see it done in buildings I visit.
- Dispose of as much as you can at the last collection before you leave, and then anything you accumulate after that before you go away put in a small bag and either ask a neighbour to take or put in a street bin. Note: the latter is NOT allowed but of course people do it.
- Figure out where the flats are locally that have their own outside bins and use these if you have a flight awkwardly timed with your garbage collection schedule. This is probably also not allowed, nevertheless I have always observed people doing it with ours occasionally and I don‘t think it is begrudged on an occasional basis. If you are anywhere near one of the big estates which have chutes on the street to underground silos then there are hundreds of residents anyway so hard for anyone to spot really that you weren‘t resident.
Your location reads as Zurich. When I was living in Zurich (recently) it was like this for our apartment building, and from what I could see, all of the neighbouring ones. We put out the Züri sacks on the correct days, same for cardboard.
It's not a major health and safety hazard, and I had a very clean apartment. Perhaps you throw away too much food, or what's the issue?
I guess they don’t leave it out long. Honestly I’m not sure, as my building has an outside garbage place. I guess people mainly try to avoid it by other ways and only leave it for the shortest time possible if really needed, so it’s not usually a problem. I’ve never heard of anyone having a rat problem.
Basically people are sensible, pragmatic, talk to their neighbors and help each other out from what I can tell.
I am no longer living in zurich. But when I lived there there was a container for the building. So although the garbage was collected on specific timetables in the week, you could drop the bag in the container at any time.
As there's only 2 of us, we only put out one 35ltr size bag per week and we regularly recycle glass, PET etc at the local shops and the glass recycling banks. We have the type of kitchen with the bin in a drawer under the sink, as long as you wrap any food scraps up well, keep the bin clean and stick an air fresh thing on the frame it's fine, there are no odours in my apartment. Some of the apartment buildings in the turnings near us running down to the Rheinweg at St Alban have communal bins outside and when I lived in Kleinbasel some buildings had them in the basement and the caretaker would take them out on collection day.
In Britain people have about 4 different bins and you are lucky if they are emptied fortnightly!
There are people called neighbours and assuming you take the time to get to know them, which might be a big assumption in some cases, you will be amazed what can be achieved - plants get watered, pets get looked after, mail taken in and yes even rubbish put out on the correct day.
First I separate out my recycle to normal rubbish.
I separately within home have different bins in rooms. All food stuff goes in bin in kitchen. You can in Switzerland if necessary put some food stuff down the toilet as the sewage pipes are large, complicated, but make sure it is the size of what comes out of your bum. Many people keep their closed rubbish bag on a balcony if they have one or more. If not try and keep it somewhere cool.
We were very lucky our last town had an amazing recycle place a short 10 minutes drive where they took many different items. Neighbour under us, who had relied on daughter who visited every couple of months to do her recycle, we got into habit of picking up hers when we went, as we had a car. No biggie.
Maybe once or twice over 5 years we might have asked a neighbour to put our rubbish out, but we managed if only dry rubbish to leave in flat. Though I think I might have once taken a carrier bag only half or less full to put in street bin, that had food.
Now live in London, UK. Small block of flats, no concierge, so we pay extra for large rubbish and recycle bins, that they drive into our front car park to empty. Otherwise we would have to put bins into the road certain time and pick up within time frame.
We lived in a flat like that for 2 years in Zurich and I frankly do not remember how we did it and this shows it was a non issue. Garbage was collected once a week and it was just 2 of us and high travelers and it worked.
So don't worry too much about it. It will all be fine, we are all fine.
We are a family of 2 in Basel , we buy the 17ltr bebbisak, it takes a few days for it to fill up
Meat/bones are tricky especially if you have fresh bag as they have to wait till the bag is full especially in summer, in some cases the bag goes out prematurely filled which is the tradeoff
In any cases apartments with balconies are more convenient, winters are usually more easier
Summers we compost so most veggie scraps are gone , dry waste is not super time sensitive anyways
Finally all the fantastic plastic boxes and cartons we gather from eating berries , tomatoes, icecreams etc end up helping us fill the gabage bag much faster than needed
All in all a very manageable problem actually
Now that we have a kid with a continous flow of wet diapers , we hope that our garbage bag movement will be almost every collection day
But are all appartment blocks in Zurich like this? Or do some/most have containers?
I lived in zurich 3 years ago i lived in kreis 11, and kreis 7 and in both cases i had a container bin outside the building, so no need to wait for collection day to get rid of garbage.
Comments here did not mention what cannot be done, or will be fined:
-You can only place the Bebbi sag after 7 pm the day before collection day
-Electonics cannot be disposed in the Bebbi sag. The trash police can look into the Bebbi sag to search for any evidence (like disposed bank statement, for example) about the owner of the Bebbi sag and still punish you
-Home originated waste cannot be disposed in garbage bin on the street
For the welbeing of the workers of the garbagecollection,their work will start from 05am (2 hours early), so it will be better to place the garbage bags the day before from 07 pm outside your address, to be collected in the mornng.