Pretty rabid round here about recycling and as each garbage bag costs $1.75 you only want to put one out a week.

Styrofoams a problem though, they don't collect it and yet you seem to get loads of it.

Beer bottles left unattended on the front porch here are recycled incredibly quickly, step inside for a pee and your bottle is in some homeless guy's bicycle trailer.

I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' speculation that the missing Dark Matter in the Universe is packaging material.

if that's the case then much of it is in our garage.

Red Deer City: Blue bin (that you pay extra for monthly) for paper, plastics, cans. Summer free yard waste pick up - winter free Christmas tree pick up and I think up to 5 black bags per week. A separate truck for each service on the same day.

Red Deer County: Yer on yer own mate, do as you will...

We do save drinks containers and either donate or collect the fee when we take them back. Haven't yet got a compost heap, don't know if I will.

I'm going to do this...and hope that someone wants them at some point. My mother-in-law, in Calgary, saves them up and the Boy Scouts' come and collect.... alternatively, I can drink at a steady pace, save it all up and if nobody comes to take them, I should be able to put my kid through uni on the proceeds! It give me a goal.

Here, various schools have recycling drives from time to time. Drop off the recyclables that have a deposit on them - drinks containers - and the school deals with them to get the deposits. Might be worth looking out for.

Where I live now we have a large recycling bin which is collected once a week.
You can also take soft drink cans and bottles to the local supermarket and get back 5c each.

If you put out metal items someone will take it before the bin men come round.

When I lived on the east side of Montreal, We had 3 collections per week two for general rubbish and once per week for recycling.

If you put anything that you could get money back on, the local homeless people would take it. There was also those who would take any barely useable furniture that you might put out.

Brown bin (compostables) is once a week. We line it with yard waste bags because they are cheaper than brown bin bags. The same guys pick up as many yard waste bags as you care to put out, along with branches and any tree stump they can physically lift.

Blue bin (very large) is every two weeks and there is no need to sort. The dumpster divers arrive before the truck. The blue bin guys are picky about styrofoam. They chuck back in your yard.

Regular trash is every two weeks. Our bin is rarely full and mostly contains cat shit. The trash guys will take just about anything left out, although some stuff needs to be packaged discreetly (like drywall and decking). Anything remotely useful or valuable left at the bottom of the driveway is gone long before the truck shows up.

When my kids were younger, we had to save the Campbell's soup labels for the school

http://www.labelsforeducation.com/

Not sure if anyone does this anymore though

It's because your paper is recycled into paper, which is also why you have to separate paper from glass. Here in Calgary, the paper becomes insulation, which is also the end product for the vast majority of recycled paper. As a result, we put our paper in a bin with all the other recyclables and are able to recycle wrapping paper.

The paper used for wrapping paper is typically poor quality and full of chemical dyes, which make it unsuitable for recycling into paper.

Kerbside pick up of food waste, yard trimmings and non-rcyclables here (Metro Vancouver, BC). We have to take our recyclables (that are banned from the garbage) to the local depot.

Organics will be banned from region's (Metro Vancouver/GVRD) transfer stations by 2015. In preparation, all 3 north shore munis, as well as some of the more urban municipalities, currently offer food scrap collection.

Be interesting to see how that goes. Bears vs Recycling. Wonder how many people will keep their scraps in the freezer 'til recycling day and diligently wash out the can. A friend of mine had his BBQ trashed this summer by bear when he forgot and left a couple of burgers on it overnight - should have left the bear a beer to wash down the burgers.