The amount of rubbish and the types of rubbish we recycle has changed over the years.

And not just what and how much is recycled has changed: the colour of bin you put the waste in and the sort of label or symbol on the bin has changed at different times in different places so now varies from city to city. Even within Copenhagen, the what and the where is different from one part of the city to the next. Some people would claim that you get a better sort of rubbish in Frederiksberg or Hellerup to the rubbish people throw away in Christianshavn but I'm not convinced.

But now, throughout Denmark, all this is to be rationalised and with standard graphics so, hopefully, you will no longer have to stand in front of a line of bins trying to work out what the symbol really means.

Now there will be ten different bins for ten types of waste.

…. but even here they seem to have forgotten batteries and is anyone completely sure when paper is too thick to be paper and becomes cardboard or at what point a pamphlet becomes a book?

All we do know for certain is that gone are the days when everything simply went into one bin and ended up at the district heating incinerator.

the waste recycle bins on Overgaden Neden Vandet from the other side of the canal

Since a post here back on 6 October on the new trial waste recycle stations in Christianshavn there has been a development …. another station and with another three bins has appeared on the quay of Overgaden Neden Vandet.

It is similar to its companion, three metres or so away, with dark red metal cladding and a beguiling wooden seat, but it is not an exact clone … the slots are different and the labels showing what waste goes where have been shuffled around.

The paranoid think computers will take over the world and dispense with the people who made them but it would be ironic if we are watching and worrying about the wrong thing … now there are two on the canal side will there be shenanigans at night and a gaggle of baby waste bins soon? The one at the far end of the quay, with the books and the propaganda must be the ringleader but it's when the computers put their waste straight into the recycle bins that we have to worry. They must be watched.

Platant
Krilov Architects