Garbage

I don't want to forget the little differences in everyday things here in Doha, like the garbage. In Las Vegas, you have garbage men & recycling men who you see jumping on and off of the back of the trucks. They hook up the standard large bin to the truck to dump, toss the other bags of trash, and empty smaller bins into the trucks. I know being a garbage man isn't glorious, but as a kid I always wanted to hang off the back of the truck like them. It seemed so fun.

In Provo, recycling is not as prevalent (I've never actually seen the trucks) and the garbage men are difficult to catch a glimpse of. You must place your garbage can sufficiently far away from the curb, which seems like the middle of the road. A mechanical arm reaches out and grabs the can and dumps it. If it isn't in that can, it doesn't seem to go into the truck.

Here in Doha, it may be a city, but it is a little more "small town." Recycling, yeah, not really happening, though they are supposedly starting up a program. This is the only evidence I've seen in the city of anything "green."

Photo courtesy of Sarah Martin's Facebook

Our trash cans are right outside our front door, so we take our trash out, but we never have to take that can out to the road. Someone comes and collects it daily, often twice daily. The collector doesn't have the mechanical arm to dump it, nor does he get to swing freely from the back of the truck.


He just gets to load up and push his overflowing wheelbarrow.