Now we have been to France before, and we had noticed that similar to Italy, everyone used black plastic bags for their house refuse. These bags were often piled up on the footpaths or placed in bins provided. We had both forgotten the rules for managing the garbage, but this morning on our walk to the bins it all became very clear. We had wondered why some bags of rubbish were lying around the bins when it was not too hard to place them in those provided just down the road from us.

Well, this morning when we were disposing Michael’s oyster shells in a white plastic bag we noticed that the ones he had put there yesterday in a blue plastic bag were on the ground, certainly not where he put them. So we looked more closely in the almost empty bin (obviously the garbage men / person had been around yesterday) and noticed that most of the rubbish that was left there was what we had put in (sans black plastic bags).

So, not to break French custom, Michael headed off with stick in hand to rectify the problem.

Note the crucifix marking the garbage depot. Obviously showing how significant this site is.

The black plastic bins look like this (for those of you considering travelling here in the next few months).

And this is obviously correct!

Michael rectifying our mistakes.

While we understand the glass recycling rules (which is handy as that seems to be our most common rubbish). And there is no need to separate colours, or so we think.

Plastic and paper are still confusing.

Michael and I do wonder what happens to the thousands of non biodegradable black plastic bags full of rubbish once they have been miraculously taken from this big bins though.