See title. I realized that trash collection systems sometimes differ between streets... so this is just about where you live, whether it is one specific street/building or an entire country. No need to mention exactly where if you don't feel comfortable.
For where I currently live. Government makes colored trash bags (plastics/metals, papers, organic, general waste, etc) that people can buy at local supermarkets, and these bags are required for trash collection. On collection day we just... place the bags outside of the houses/apartments. Some places buy their own trash bins too, but they are rare.
The place I live in seem to take recycling very seriously. I've heard from colleagues that putting the wrong things in a bag sometimes result in the "trash police" sending a fine to where you live. Allegedly the police do that by looking at where your last letter/Amazon/random delivery address (in your paper recycling bag) was sent to...
My understanding is that it is a surprisingly effective recycling system... but with the downside that 1) the city doesn't look particularly great on/after trash collection day, and 2) sometimes the local wildlife will rip open the trash bags
Edit: some more details regarding where I live if anyone is interested. Most people only use four colored bags that are collected per week: blue (plastic, metal, something else...), yellow (paper-based recyclables), white ("residual", essentially non-recyclable items), and orange (kitchen waste). There are also bags for garden waste and heavy waste, but they are not picked up from residential addresses. Glass is either returned to the supermarket (beer bottles) or disposed of at specific dropoff bins. Things like batteries/electronics are specific, I just take them back to the store. There are also pink bags, but they are only used by businesses
It's a bit of a shit show in Australia.
Each city is responsible for it's own waste management. Mine has 3x channels: green waste for biodegradable anything, recyclables, and everything else.
The recyclables are a furphy though because, you can put anything plastic or paper in them, but ofc it's really only the PET plastic and the cardboard that actually gets recycled - the rest just goes to land fill.
We have a separate system for specific PET bottles vendors charge $0.10 per bottle, and you can return the bottles to a collection place to get that back.
We did have a separate system for soft plastics like plastic bags or whatever but that pretty much just wasn't viable.
Rant triggered: we've aparently stopped single use plastics like takeaway boxes, plastic bags, and plastic cuttlery, but IMO that's really just a fig leaf for companies that ship products in plastic packaging. It really shits me.
Additional rant: producers of plastic products like garbage bags have started this bullshit "ocean plastics" thing. They claim 50% or whatever of their bullshit bags are made from "ocean plastic" which they define as recycled plastic obtained from any community within 50km of the ocean (the vaaaast majority of Australians) which has no other plastic collection program. So basically... they charge city councils to disappear their plastic waste and then charge idiots to buy their "ocean plastic" garbage bags.
We have plastic recycling blue bins, but barely 9% actually gets recycled.
Yeah I think this is the story everywhere.
PET (plastic drink bottles) can be recycled to produce more drink bottles, indefinitely and cost effectively.
Soft plastics like bread bags can be converted into shopping bags but in Australia at least it doesn't seem to be cost effective.
A few other types of plastic like yoghurt containers can be down-cycled into ugly green benches or something.
Everything else just can't be cost effectively converted into anything useful.
Recycling is just a fig leaf for plastic producers.