Garbage

Although in the U.S. we often say "garbaaaage", with a faux French accent, the French word for garbage is ordure and the word for garbage can is poubelle.  When we were revisiting the imperatif in French class, one of the phrases was "Descende la poubelle!" (Take down the garbage!), which has come in quite handy with Rick back in town.

The garbage cans for this building are in an enclosed court surrounded by the building walls.  You have to have a code to get into the court from the street, and to get back into the building from the court. (The concierge was kind enough to tell me the code when I was in the court and discovered that that code is different from the code on the front door.) There's a net over the top of the building to discourage birds from entering and messing with the garbage.

There are three types of cans.  The ones with the green lids are for garbage, the yellow lids are for recycling and between those two there are a couple of cans that have rubber rimmed holes cut out of the lids for glass.

When bottles are dropped into the glass receptacle, the noice reverberates around the entire court, which probably explains this note on the front door.

It basically suggests that garbage, especially glass, should be thrown out only between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.

My apartment doesn't face the garbage court, but every time I drop a wine bottle in the poubelle (which is quite often!), I feel bad for the people who have windows that look out over the garbage court.

There's a restaurant on the ground floor of the building, and maybe 40 apartments or offices that use the garbage court, so you can imagine the cans fill up pretty quickly. Luckily the cans are emptied almost every day by the Parisian garbagemen.