Leaving my dorm building, I am met with the sight of two dumpsters, one for recycling, one for trash. A few feet further along, there is a small trash can that is always overflowing with cans and sandwich packaging among other unsavory items. To the foreign visitor to Montpellier, trash is a clearly visible issue that the community and guests need to work on to solve.
Trash is a large problem in Montpellier. Trashcans are randomly placed throughout the city, and if you're lucky to find one, it will probably be overflowing. This leads to people becoming frustrated and to trash finding its way onto the streets instead. There are also problems surrounding recycling culture in the city: there simply are not enough recycling units. Here in Montpelier, unlike at Loyola, I do not have a recycling bin in my room, making it hard for students to take up the habit of recylcing. There are very few trashcans on the streets, and no recycling bins or bins for compost that I could see. The end result is the same: whether from trash or recycling, everything that is thrown away, on either the groud or in the trashcan, is waste that could be better processed.
