We are the Buffalo Team – Davy, Max, Wang and Victor. As newcomers from China, arrangements were made for us to live in an apartment together. Because everything is new to us; in the beginning we were happy, excited and enthusiastic. Then when we dealt with trash dumping, something happened that made us feel a little upset. The culture bump we had was that we dumped the trash in the Chinese way and broke the rules of trash collecting.
When we moved in the apartment, we had been told that only in the scheduled time could trash be put outside of the door. So we did that according to the scheduled time of trash collecting. Then last Wednesday night, the trash collector refused to take our trash bag away because of the weight. We had to separate the trash bag into two bags, tie them and put them into the bin and leave it outside the door.
Even though we already knew that the trash collecting service had lots of rules in Houston, we felt shocked when it happened. In China, we could put the trash bag outside the door at any time and and take it to the trash-dumping place by ourselves. So we don’t need to worry about the bags being overweight.
We all know that there is lots of garbage being produced every day. How to collect it? How to deal with it? These questions are universal in the world. So no matter in China or in the USA, we all want to keep the community clean and process the trash in environment-friendly ways. So let us listen to what the Houstonians say about trash collecting.
Pen Sula, a Houstonian for over 30 years says,
“For trash collectors, they have to pick up the trash door by door. If the trash bag is too heavy, the bag may be broken and the dirty trash will leak out to the floor. On the other hand, the trash-collecting service is so tough that we should ease their workload by trouble-shooting solutions.”
A security man in our community says,
“Every waste collection company has to make some regulations to manage the trash collecting business. So it is the rule that you have to comply with it. Before moving in the community, we should learn the basic rules not only about the trash duping but also about other things you should know living here.”
Victor, a local student at UH says,
“Houston is a metropolitan area with lots of parts. So we should control the waste to protect the ecological system. It is necessary to make rules to manage the trash collection. Because I live in a house in the suburbs, I have different experiences than you. But the same thing is I still have to stick to rules on trash dumping.
It is more convenient to dump the trash in China. But there are still some problems caused by improper trash dumping manners. Compared with China, the United States has more specific rules on trash collection to protect the environment and the rights of trash collectors. In our opinion, these rules could reflect the civilization and kindness to humanity, community, nature and environment.