True story. Two days ago my sister and my grandmother from Latvia arrived in Brussels to visit me for a few days.

While they observed the situation in my house, my sister got an idea of helping to clean it, so yesterday we spent quite a few hours cleaning the house and taking care also of the garden, cutting the dead leaves and making the stairs look nicer. When the time came to put them into a garbage, my sister asked me to bring some garbage bags...

... And here a problem or actually just a small confusion started. You see, in Latvia we do not separate waste. Ok, maybe somebody is doing it privately, but I do not know any such a person and I can not imagine how would it be possible to be done as all the garbage is collected together centrally. I remember that some years ago we used to go to a shop and give them back glass bottles, getting some cents in return for that, but now it is not possible to do it anymore (don't ask me why). Last year I noticed that in 1-2 shops there are automatic machines, where you can put plastic bottles and get some money back for that - but never saw anybody using them... So we do not separate waste, we do not know how to do it and there is no real information why is it important.

But now I am living in Belgium, where separating waste is a must and your city council can even give a fine to your house if you put rubbish in a wrong coloured bag. Since I moved here a few months ago, I started to pay attention to different kinds of waste, understand which rubbish should I put in white, blue, yellow or green bag - and understanding why should I do so.

But my sister does not. She has never lived abroad, so when I told her that we do not have green garbage bags for leaves and I need to go to the shop to buy them, she asked for other ones. An explanation that we have only white at home and we can't use them was not satisfactory - she simply did not understand the problem...

Maybe we should learn from this small example that a lesson about separating the waste is necessary in all schools and countries, not only those where it is really going on? And in countries, where government or city council is not taking care of it, they should give the possibility at least for those citizens who care to separate their own waste.