Garbage service in Ulaanbaatar

zieak ♦ April 3, 2012 ♦ Leave Your Comment

Here’s how garbage works here. We either leave our trash bags outside our apartment on the landing of the stairs or we carry it outside to an area designated to pile up the garbage of the area apartments, businesses, bars, and restaurants. The spot has wire fencing on three sides and above but is only about an 8 foot cube. That garbage pile spills out of the cage every day – partially because scavengers come to pillage. Human, canine, and avian – they come and take the food, metal, recyclable items and things that still have some use in them. They tear through the bags and dump out boxes.

Almost every day the garbage truck comes along. You can hear it coming. It has a jingle that plays – almost like an ice cream truck. I have seen on many of the garbage trucks a “Donated by Japan” message painted on the sides of the trucks. A Japanese kid told us that the jingle that is played by the trucks is a Japanese song and that anyone from there is very happy when they hear it. They pull up and a few men shovel the waste into the back of the garbage truck. After they have left the ground looks like it has been swept clean.