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I just binged 6-7 of your videos, and I'm now convinced that the Netherlands are a mythical fantasy land where simply living your life isn't an inconvenience.

I am Dutch and I lived in India for 7 years. There was no garbage day there. Just garbage. Everywhere.

As a Dutchie, also living in Amsterdam, I always find your videos fascinating. If you grow up in the same environment, often you takes things for granted while they are actually very clever designed.

We have this in Portugal since the 2000s. Didn’t know it was such an advanced thing

There is a story of a California park ranger who was discussing the problem of creating a bear-resistant garbage can. He summarised the problem as follows: "There is considerable overlap in intelligence between our smartest bears and our dumbest tourists."

Imagine if we took all the good, innovative and smart factors of cities from around the world and implemented them into other cities... it would be so amazing

This work only when you have a responsible government that empties them on regular basis. We had those installed in my neighborhood and they got filled really quickly and the area around them and it smelled...

Actually, this should be titled " Every day is garbage day in Amsterdam."

Most places in The Netherlands still have garbage days. We do too AND have underground containers.

It still exist in the outskirts of Amsterdam. It is simple: if you have a garden in Amsterdam you have a big bin and a garbage day(there are exceptions). If you live in appartments you have the underground garbage and thus no garbage day.

For someone who's been living his whole life in a country like Finland, that feels beyond absurd. Granted, I never lived in a big city and we don't have raccoons here. But in towns/cities, you don't have your own garbage bin. The neighborhood or the building you live in will have them and you don't have to worry about them. And there are dedicated recycling areas around the city. Another thing I'd like to mention is that we get money when we return the bottles and cans back to the shops. 0.15€ from cans 0,10€/0,20€/0,40€ from bottles. That amount is already included in the product price, but we can get it back. There are machines in the shops that you put them in and it gives you a ticket that you can turn into money or use it to buy something. The bottles and cans are then recycled and reused. I'm quite interested which other countries have this kind of a system in use? I know Sweden does at least.

Our neighborhood in Prague replaced regular above ground dumpsters with these a few years ago. It wasn't accepted well. The underground dumpsters have receptacles smaller than common garbage bags, so you need to cram your garbage into it with force. Sometimes bags burst, so these hightech underground dumpsters are surrounded by heaps of rotting trash that didn't fit in. The old dumpsters had a sliding lid that opened to a 1 by 1.5 meter opening, you could throw in a 100 liter bag once a week. Now we need to use smaller bags (30-40 liter) and go more often (so more plastic bags, more time spent). The old dumpsters could be picked up and emptied by the garbage truck inside of 20 seconds. The underground one needs a crane and a crew of men guiding it with rods, and it takes 1-2 minutes each. Every Tuesday morning is a race to beat the garbage truck, because it clogs the one-way street for 20+ minutes.

So they basically took the concept that works in most apartment complexes, where you just throw your trash into a central location as needed & it get picked up (mostly) regularly, and applied it to the whole city? That's literally genius!

This channel is basically one massive flex of Dutch's society and how modern and progressive they are.

A town we stayed in in the Netherlands had the same "no garbage day" system. Unfortunately people are the same the World over and a lot of the garbage found its way onto the street somewhere near the receptacles provided. Taking out the garbage was a rubber gloves and gumboots job.

At first I was thinking this was some holiday called “We Have No Garbage” Day

the garbage truck is the coolest thing ever to toddlers. adding music might just send them over the edge.

Imagine being an American kid who moves to Taiwan, and then in the summertime you hear what you think is the ice cream truck, then you run outside and find out it's actually the garbage truck!

Things like this are why when solving any issue, a government should first look at what other countries are doing and asking "Can we do this too instead of coming up with a super expensive new solution that might not even work?"

Wow, I’m surprised by the situation in Toronto! Here in south Brazil we have locked trash containers on the outside of buildings, for organic and recyclable, which everyone in the building has a key for and each apartment takes care of their own trash to be disposed there. Then, twice a week the waste truck picks everything up. Now the real issue begins, as our waste treatment is nearly zero and we have piles of trash just dumped somewhere with no respect for the environment whatsoever.

Heyo! Dutch sanitation worker here! I actually empty these for a living (though not in Amsterdam) here's a couple fun facts for those of you who are interested; - The containers for glass, packaging, paper, and textiles are usually grouped together in so-called 'recycling islands' or 'recycling streets'. These containers are emptied on a shedule like mentioned in the video. Ideally, the truck comes by when the container is just about full. -The 'waste' containers (for non-recyclables) operate on a pay-per-click system, using a contactless household-bound smart card. The card opens the drum once, after which you can put a 60 or 30L bag in, and close it, which rotates the drum so the bag falls into the container. -The container registers this action as one 'click' and it knows how many clicks it can take before it's full. Once it's at about 60%, it sends a signal to HQ and gets put on the route for the next day. -When the truck comes by to empty the waste containers, after putting it back into the ground, the worker will swipe a special badge over the container display, resetting the 'click counter'. -Using this system, the trucks only head out to 60-100% full containers, maximizing efficiency, and in our case, one truck is enough to cover 90.000 inhabitants on a 5-day 8-hour shedule. -Containers can have many different mechanisms for lifting and discharging via truck-mounted crane! In the video, you see the so-called "mushroom" system, allowing the operator to empty the container and put it back into the pit, all without having to do ANY manual labor. -Waste containers only need a small solar cell to power the locking mechanism and the click counter! -Compactor containers like the one in the video are powered by a power supply that's mounted inside the pit. These containers have a screw compactor inside, and a laser tripwire that activates it when an x amount of bags have been dropped into the container! -Depending on the company, area, and circumstances, crane trucks can empty between 50 and 120 containers per day! Trucks are typically operated by one person, who drives the truck to the various locations, gets out, and empties the containers via remote-control truck-mounted crane. -Our trucks (like most in the business) have crane-mounted weighing systems, that can weigh a container in the air, once when full, and once when empty. This way, using geodata, the system knows which container we're loading based on our current location, and keeps track of the volume of each container when emptied. This data is then used to optimize routes, and move the emptying times backward or forward on the shedule as needed.

In Spain there is neither "Garbage day". Garbage is collected everyday (important due to the hot weather in summer). Containers are usually in the streets and in many cities, specially in historic districts, there are as well many underground containers.

This is so awesome that you posted about this. I remember seeing this a lot when I was in Vienna for recycling and tried explaining it to people, they thought I was crazy.

In Finland, I had no idea that trash day was a thing. I laughed at the prospect of having to haul your trash out once every two weeks!

This channel is basically just dedicated to worshipping the Netherlands. I love it.

Same as in almost all of Spain. Every day is a trash day :-) They got automated trucks for trash pickups that do not require trash cans.

When I lived in Australia, the condominium I lived in had shared garbage and recycling containers, so we would just take out the trash whenever the bags were full. You don’t need fancy underground if you’re just have a massive container in the side alley that everyone in the block uses.

The way it got pulled out of the ground O_O; Fascinating ..

as a dutchie, the word trash-panda made me laugh so hard, just genius

I want to thank you for the amazing information you provide to your viewers. This is fascinating material. I appreciate all of your efforts. Many thanks!

When I stayed at an AirBnB in Amsterdam I had no idea about this but just ended up taking the bag of trash to a trash can, this is awesome!

There is no "garbage day" when every day is garbage day.

I’ve been to Iran three years ago, they have garbage day everyday, garbage cars come everyday after midnight, so after you take out the garbage before midnight and you won’t see any in the morning plus I remember there was a fine if you take out the garbage in the morning which insure that the city remain clean and good looking

The pen vs pencil thing WAS true. The soviets started with pencils, but the shavings started floating around, getting into everything, people's eyes, lungs, some of the pencils graphite even caused problems with electrical shorting.

We use the same system, except it's by building. The containers are monitored for fill level, so if the scheduled pickup is too late, they get picked up sooner. It's great! ❤

I'm Dutch and the underground system is only is city centers. smaller towns still use the bins or use a combination. Personally i have a bin for paper & cardboard, and another one for compostables (gft, natural stuff like fruit peels, egg shells, weeds from your garden etc), but the plastic goes into an underground thing, and so does the "restafval" (whatever doesn't fit in the previous categories.) . Then there's also above-ground containers for recycling glass, textiles, and cans. empty batteries go into a recycling bin in the supermarket.

This is not quite as universal as you make it sound 🙂. These underground trash bins are used in denser neighborhoods, inner cities and for midrise appartment blocks and highrise flats. They can often be card-locked for use by the residents only. The underground recycling bins for glass, paper and plastic (and sometimes for other things like metals or old clothes and shoes) are universal; they are placed in every neighborhood and near neighborhood stores and around shopping centers, for use by everyone. The lower-density neighborhoods (as in suburbs and smaller towns) do tend to have the large plastic rolling bins of different colours for trash and recycling, that are picked up on an elaborate schedule in alternating weeks - everyone has a gray one for trash and a green or brown one for composting waste, then most municipalities have a third colour (blue, or gray with orange lids, or whatever) for a third type that differs by municipality: I have an orange-lid one for plastics, my father in a different town has a blue one for paper. His plastics get collected in plastic bags once every fortnight, our more windy town stopped doing that as the wind made a mess of those bags, so they switched to the third container. Our paper still gets picked up by volunteers for the sports clubs and churches, who get paid for the volume they collect. In dad's town they didn't consider that economically sensible, and the municipality collects the paper trash in the blue household bins. But even in areas with separate household recycling bins you'll find the underground recycling bins, at the least near the neighborhood store (but often in more locations), for people who don't want to collect all these separate fractions at home for two weeks, and don't mind walking 50 meters to dispose of it, or taking the empties back when they go to the shop.

I just adore that expression "trash panda" and will call them that going forward...

Big trash panda corporation is going to be so mad when they find out about this.

The reason pencils aren't a good idea in space is because graphite dust goes everywhere - and it's a conductor, so huge problems

"Trash pandas" at my college, we just call them students.

Thank you for making me better aware of the wonderful city and country I live in. Dank je wel.

Here in finland weve had this for like, ever. Just throw the bag in one of those big trash container things and the truck comes once a week to take it from there, you yourself dont have to care about any garbage day, i didnt even know one existed.

Here in Leiden (Netherlands), we used to have a similar problem a few years ago but with trash birds (seagulls). On trash day, they would descend on the bags and rip them to shreds, strewing garbage across the streets, while noisily quarreling amongst themselves. The gemeente (local government) of Leiden undertook a campaign to get people to start using seagull-proof yellow trash bags, which proved quite unsuccessful, going as far as launching an ad campaign depicting the seagulls as gangsters. In the end, the gemeente gave up and installed these underground trash collection points (one right outside the house we had just bought). Although the noise of the trash truck can be excessive, and we've pressured the gemeente to adjust the collection hours to later on in the day, it's such a relief not having to deal with the mess and noise of the seagulls.

We have those in Romania too. Garbage day is still a thing in smaller communities but even in cities with ~50k inhabitants (or at least my city), the dumpsters are underground like that. I really like them this way (one downside being that they are harder to close when poorly maintained) because they keep things tidy and keep dumpster divers out. Edit: Actually it's just a substitute for normal dumpsters, suburbs still have garbage day.

I've been researching (a lot) about other countries and their ways of life. Thus far, the Netherlands seems to be the nicest in the sense of commuting. It's also good to know that plenty of people there speak English.

Speaking of Trash Panda's, I just found your channel a couple of days ago and I've been rummaging through your videos and binge watching them. Thank you for what your doing and how you have contributed to a better World. 😀👍❤

This isn’t ideal for all cities but man New York could definitely use it!

Ok as a Dutch guy, I can tell you it's kind of a Myth here in this video that most of the Netherlands has these fancy trash containers. because it is true if you live in an apartment or any toll building then you are most likely to have something like this. But in a lot of Dutch regular homes we just have garbage day like everybody else. In fact we have even giant containers like you've just showed in your video this is pretty much identical. I do not live in a suburb I live in a pretty decent City called nieuwegein that is pretty close to the major city of Utrecht. the fast majority of the homes near me have just normal garbage containers. However a lot of trash containers usually get put into a central location for picking up in the neighbourhood. Animal wise we don't have to deal with trash pandas at worst we might have to deal with a curious household cat so we don't have that problem. Which is something I think is quite difficult to solve in Canada. I think when you have a big household and just have to dispose of a lot of trash. there is no way to go around a trash container. I would say a simple solution to the trash panda problem is to have a simple and basic lock that uses a universal key. that can be opened by anyone because that animal maybe smart but I doubt it be able to beat a simple lock.

I agree, trash pandas are a nuisance. Would love to see this implemented here in Canada

That is a really great way to keep the garbage tucked away and the city clean. I live in Greece and the garbage trucks empty all the bins every night. We don't have smaller individual ones but each block has at least 1 big bin on each side and the trucks pass by all streets vertically and horizontally.

Pencils are actually strangely dangerous in space. Graphite dust breaks off and is free to float around. The problem is that it can float into electronics and it is electrically conductive which can cause huge problems with no way to fix it.

Should rename the channel to "Not just reasons to move to Amsterdam"

Watching this video made me aware of how convenient it is to have this modern way of garbage disposal. I live in Leeuwarden, north in the Netherlands and we have a shared underground garbage container. but I also lived in other parts of the country where we did ( and still do) have the weekly or monthly pick up system. Both work fine, but it sure is more easy do get rid of my garbage anytime it fits in my daily program...it's a kind of luxury and I now appreciate it more, thanks for this video

This was recommended to me by youtube today after I watched a few of your videos. I live in the UK and have weekly food waste and paper waste disposal, bi-weekly large green bins Canada style along with mixed recycling black bin. So I put all the bins out this Monday on collection day in a row and for some reason was the only house on the street not to have their food waste and paper recycling collected. I checked the food waste bin like "Huh maybe this was emptied." only to open it and be greeted with a writhing ocean of maggots at the bottom in my food waste. Actually vile. The imagine is going to haunt me and live rent free in my head for weeks if not months. I wish we had collections like this but I am stuck in shitty UK suburbia, much more walkable and accessible than North American suburbs but still terribly lonely and now I am discovering inefficient in so many other ways :D

So taking your trash down 20 steps is difficult but walking around block makes much more sense...

I've made a follow up to this garbage video that answers all of your garbage questions 😉 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Z8yUq6x9ybPPY2Q.html

Here in Switzerland we too have these type of bins jn a lot of places. We can see if the bins have been emptied as in the the surrounding areas there will be magots in the undergrowth... the stink of the open bin getting picked up is sickening

Except of course, that every neighbourhood DOES have a garbage day every (other) week, they just empty out the large containers, instead of the wheelie bins per house.

Years back my brother went to Austria to attend a medical conference, & when he came back we were so eager for him to tell us about the wonders he saw in Europe, but the thing he was the most fascinated about was their garbage system (which is similar to what you showed) So yeah it's a pretty cool system especially coming from a country where if a plot of land is empty for more than a week it becomes a trash dump

That is a really clever way to handle garbage. We don't have racoons or possums getting into our garbage in Australia, but sometimes a dog may open a lid and pull out some garbage, but it's rare these days.

I used to live in a couple of condos in Canada that had garbage chutes. You made me realize how much I miss those.

We've been getting this in Norway too these past years. It's great!

I live in greater São Paulo and in my city we have trash collection 3 times a week, plus recycling collection in the other 2 days remaining. That Toronto’s schedule is a little weird because you’ve to keep your trash in your home for a really time. But, about the garbage container in Amsterdam: simply genius. I hope this trend grows worldwide.

Honestly, the garbage system in the Netherlands is one of my least favourite things about living here. Ever tried to shove your plastic recycling one by one down the tiny opening of these orange plastic bins? It's like they don't want you to recycle. Also, the bins are often full and then people just start throwing their trash next to the containers, which then gets blown all over the street by the wind.

I don't know why this video is on my recommend list, but it's fun and informative, I like it

Why does it feel like Amsterdam has it all figured out, meanwhile, the "most powerful country in the world" is still living in the stone age?

He called those bins “huge” but those are the smallest once I’ve ever seen

Yes, kids do sometimes end up in these. Just hope there is no compactor on the inside of that specific one. On a serious note. I actualy do know of 2 occasions where it happened. One was near my school in Arnhem. A newborn was put in one of these at night by a parent. Passer by's heard it cry and called the emergency number (112). Another one was where kids were playing with it. And one opened it. Got in. And closed it. The friend opened it again and no more kid above ground. 112 was called and a quick 30mins later ish. He was fine. The most important thing to not here is. It's difficult. But not impossible.

i don’t remember other country having garbage day either so this is normal

"Taking out the garbage is a bizarre topic for a youtube video" After watching HowToBasic since 2017, nothing is off the table for me anymore.

In Rome (and in all Italy as far as I can tell), we have huge public bins that get emptied once periodically, so no garbage day either. Luckily we don't have raccoons, althought some poor people look for salvage sometimes. Plus when there is a delay in the cleaning service, people tend to throw the trash outside (which made for some "nice" christmas postcards, just awful). When I moved to Tarragona (Spain) and discovered the underground bin I was amazed. So elegant and clean. Althought some of them still tend to smell (probably due the fact that during summer it gets pretty hot).

A drawback of these underground containers is that when they're full, garbage just gets dumped right beside it. Where I live, this starts the day after the garbage container was emptied.

Wow! Such a simple and so great idea.

the more i watch this channel, the more i want to move to amsterdam

And also, far less breeding grounds for flying insects like houseflies and mosquitoes that can potentially carry deadly viruses. Take notes, New York and Philly!

_"it's great there's no trash hanging around outside"_ That's quite exceptional. Most of the time people just leave their trash next to an underground bin. And most Dutch cities do have trash day. Many of the those underground containers were meant for the people living in flats & apartment buildings.

Haha, nice video. Yes, These underground containters are used in plenty of other places in the Netherlands. I got one in front of the appartment builing where I live. Those have to be opened with an acces card, because they're not intended for the people across the street. They have "regular" houses and their own containers, so they *do* have the trash-day.

In my neighbourhood in Poland there is something similar, but less cool. there is just a shack behind a parking lot with industrial-size garbage bins, that everyone just throws the trash into, and the garbage truck comes and picks up all of them at once.

In Ireland we make people feel better about having to go to the nearest recycling place by calling them Bottle Banks "No its not a Recycling Bin, its a bottle bank! you're donating to the bottle factories! how nice of you!"

"They have Huge bins" **Caries a standard sized bin everyone in Britain has.**

I don't know if this would work in my city. Most people leave their trash on the tables that they eat at or just drop their trash on the ground wherever they are at. It doesn't matter to them that a trash can is two or three SUV lengths away. I think it is because these people want to inconvenience others that come after them.

I haven't travelled a lot, but the only places where I have seen garbage being collected only once a week, were small villages or villa zones, meant for no permanent living. Here in Sofia we don't really have fancy underground bins, but the normal ones are emptied every day. We have a couple of them for every apartment building because you know, a regular family makes at least a bag of garbage every day or two. I personally can't imagine having to wait a whole week with smelly garbage just to be able to get rid of it. It sounds insane!

However this is relevant, and not always the best solutions. Since Amsterdam is an overpopulated city, the trash is also huge, so huge that these underground bins are fully overloaded in no time, and the trash gets left outside the bin, causing huge rat investations

The fact that they're *introducing* trash bins with garbage days in some parts of my city, replacing the good ol' big containers 💀

we have these in Norway were i live, they are super convenient and user friendly. it feels so good just walking 60 meters to the trash shoot, and putting the bag in. 10/10 would recomend every country to get a few of these

as a dutch person living in the suburbs of The Netherlands I will have to correct you on one thing. what you're describing here is only in the big cities and usually in the centres of the big cities. we do have containers here. we call them KLIKOS and they get picked up weekly. however is done very efficiently and nobody minds it because its just putting your kliko on the side of the road and that's it.

I'm German and I'm a little jealous about the innovativeness of our dutch neighbours. They are never afraid of trying new things whereas Germany sticks to old things and habits much longer (because they must pay off first). Great job, Netherlands!

In Bergen, Norway they never collect the garbage from modern underground units, because they get transported in tunnels underground to the incineration and recycling plant 😍

Love how he carries the full bin down the stairs instead of rolling it

it would be kind of funny to put a baby in those magic underground garbage bins. "bye bye"

Also it is easier to recycle mixed waste if it is "fresher", especially compostables.

I love this, trash pandas are as you said everywhere here in Toronto and its extremely annoying, this looks so ingenious and I wonder how well it would work on this side of the world? Amazing video as always and can't wait to see what you post next!

This is not the case in most other places outside of the big cities in the Netherlands. If you live in a smaller city or in a rural area, you still have garbage day and those large bins animals can get into, in fact there’s a calendar for the different days of the month where different types of garbage are picked up (green, paper, restafval or basically generic trash, and in some places plastic separately too).

By underground I thought like a big thing with all of them connected

They did it this way at the apartments where I lived in college in the US, but it was just regular dumpsters.

We have these here too. The only downside is that the recyclables bin is full fast and sometimes people will come and dump their garbage from construction projects rather than drive a mile to the dump. But all in all, it's pretty perfect.

That's not just Amsterdam, that's normal in a lot of European cities :) I still haven't decided which i like better: cities that collect trash in containers on the street (like Amsterdam), or cities where each building has a garbage room on the inside with trash can/containers stored there.

We have the same system in Switzerland since > 40 years. I had never heard of "garbage day" before today lol