From Barcelona, I've been following the discontent in Girona over the garbage collection system implemented by the City Council, which Mayor Salellas has now partially rectified, seeing that many residents ended up throwing their garbage any day in any container or next to any container. The same thing happened in some districts of Barcelona some time ago.
I understand people. Not everyone has the space to accumulate garbage at home until it's time to throw it out, nor does everyone have the life and schedule free enough to make sure they don't miss a single day's appointment at the container for every single thing, based on a kind of municipal sudoku.
And I understand the mayor and all the mayors who believe that people should be cleaner and more responsible for cleaning the streets. I believe it too. We've grown accustomed to an invisible hand following us around, picking up what we throw away any old way, at a time of consumer society in which we produce an enormous amount of waste and feel unconcerned about what happens beyond the carpet of the independent republic of our home.
Then there are restaurant owners, or supermarket managers, or bricklayers who have never given their workers instructions on what to do with the boxes or toilets, because you can see they don't even know where they go; the point is to get rid of them immediately, someone else will take them. It's this waste that should be attacked, but since city guards haven't patrolled on foot for years now and don't speak to anyone, and everything is monitored remotely, the feeling surrounding the containers is one of impunity, so they become dumpsters. If they're not urinals. But that's another problem.
