Garbage Patrol

Here in Korea there are two bags the laws say you should buy to put your refuse into. In my district the white ones are for stuff that clog landfills and take years to break down, the orange ones are where you put all the bits of food you don't eat. If you are lucky enough to live in a good area there are bins for the recycleables. It's a good little system with regular pick up runs. If you don't follow the rules and are caught a huge fine follows. My first couple of years here I avoided getting nabbed by donning dark clothes and doing midnight garbage runs.

Restaurants follow the same program but on a larger scale. A restaurant's main dish can be horrid and still have you coming back for more if the number of side dishes are enough. An assortment of side dishes means the restaurant cares. This leads to a mountain of leftovers (that could literally feed the North Koreans for a year) that no bright orange bag could hold. Instead of bags, the waiting staff dump the food into its own garbage on wheels that at closing time is brought out to the kerb.

The last couple of times heading into work I've been present when mini garbage trucks come around to collect this fresh compost. They hook the bins up to the truck and the warm, smelly kimchi slops out. In a list of dirty jobs I would rank food collection in the top ten. I have to suppress my gag reflexes the best I can as I speed walk by. Today was the worst because I have a cold and my lungs are working at half their capacity. Filling them with this morning stench is not a great start to the day. Luckily, the rest of the day was great but I'm willing to pay anybody huge sums of money to give the garbage truck a mysterious flat tire so they are late in doing their rounds tomorrow.