Trash in Changwon

I had a ton of energy this morning.  Woke up before 6 and tried to sleep a little longer but I couldn’t.  Went for a jog instead.  It was pretty exhilirating to be up that early in the nippy weather.  There were so many people outside walking and jogging; hadn’t expected such a large number of folks.

Afterward, I decided to take my laptop to the cafe but both Holly’s and Rotibun don’t open until 10.  I thought that was strange, but it may be because downtown looks like a war zone early in the morning.  At 5am, people the last people are making their way home from bars or picking themselves up from sleeping on the sidewalks.  At 7am, all of the trash and bottles still litter the downtown area.  It looks really bad.  Also, there are no trash cans in Changwon, anyway, so it is customary to just throw garbage on the ground or to leave it in the elevator or wherever; there is so much litter.  So, while trying to find a place to use the computer (I’ve ended up in the 24-hr PC bang–it’s 8:30am) I see a legion of middle-aged to elderly people walking around with short-handled straw brooms, litter claws and plastic buckets cleaning up downtown.  They aren’t wearing uniforms and they don’t seem to be working together.  Are they employed by the city or are they just business owners taking care of their own storefronts.  I felt bad for them because they were cleaning up the mess the hard way and there was a big fucking mess.

That gets me to thinking about the trash at my place.  My foriegn coworker showed me that trash is picked up when it is put into special blue bags purchased from the convenience store.  Just tie it up and put it outside.  It’s not clear exactly when my trash day is, but if I put it out at night it’s gone the next morning.  I’m not sure about the recycling, either.  There’s some other special bag for recycling but I haven’t found any.  But when I put my bottles outside in a regular grocery store bag, they disappear.  It does seem kinda irresponsible to not know what is happening to the trash but, well, I suppose I’ll turn a blind eye.