This was our bill for rubbish collection during the last quarter of 2015. Stockholm Vatten collected 19 kg of mixed rubbish and 53 kg of food waste that will be composted or turned into biogas. Mixed rubbish is charged at 1,20 kr/kg and food waste is free of charge. Hardly any general rubbish, in other words, but quite a lot of food waste.

The reason is recycling. Since we got serious about recycling in 2014, we have drastically reduced the amount of actual rubbish we produce. A rubbish bin stands in the corner in the kitchen, but we almost never empty it. It gets emptied bi-weekly by our cleaner, and that is enough. It just does not get full in between, and since it contains little to no food waste, it doesn’t smell either.

Recycling our rubbish has made me more aware of rubbish and what we throw away. The amount of plastic packaging that comes into this house keeps astonishing me. We go through silly amounts of plastic bags, plastic jars and bottles and boxes, plastic clamshell packaging etc. And that doesn’t even include plastic shopping bags, because I use reusable textile bags instead.