A word about trash

I love living in Germany. Yet, there are some aspects of life here that I swear, I will never get used to. And, if I do get used to these things, I must return to the States for an extended period because it will mean I am going crazy!
It seems amazing that the country that is the home of incredible car brands, composers like Beethoven, and numerous glorious castles, could also be home to an array of the most aggrivating practices on earth. These practices make daily living really unique, and well, annoying.
Take for example, garbage. Coming from America, garbage was quite simple. Of course, there were the good old days, twice a week a nice man came in a truck and took your garbage. Then came recycling, when in Fairfield, one of the two garbage days became recycling days. Oh, I remember my grandmother stressing over recycling. She could never have made it here.
Germans are proud of their title as "Garbage Separation Champions." Garbage here is separated to the nth degree. Garbage is separated as follows: compostable items (very strictly tea bags, coffee grounds, uncooked fruit and vegetables), "yellow bag items" (recyclables mostly, they must have a Green Point symbol), paper, and house garbage (food scraps, paper towels, the rest of your daily garbage.) These are just the home garbage cans. When you have special waste, like batteries, styrofoam, large quantities of paper, electronics, plants, appliances, metal, glass (sorted by color), you must go to the town refuse centers. In these ceters, there is NO hopper, no blissful throw everything in the hole experience, you must neatly separate all your garbage into specefied areas.
Not that all that is enough, but every December, we receive the annual town Garbage Calendar. Mind you, it is seriously a garbage calendar.

But we seriously do need this calendar. Garbage is on a one to three week pick up plan, with the compostables taken weekly in the summer, paper is taken once every three weeks, and the others, somewhere in between.
This year, the town added an extra special treat, Monday yellow bag pick up. Tuesday used to be garbage day, and it is so tough for me to wrap my head around putting yellow bags out on Monday morning- every third week. I always used to check our garbage calendar on Monday nights, and constantly forget to now do so on Sunday nights. Main reason for this story? I forgot, yet again, to check the calendar last night, and we missed our yellow bag pick up- AGAIN!!!