Plastic Bags and Recycling...

When I first went grocery shopping here I was horrified to have my stuff packed for me in what seemed like a hundred plastic bags having bought into the reusable bag thing in the UK...
Eggs get a bag of their own as do soft items like bread so that they don't get broken/crushed. Same thing goes for cleaning products, veg, bottles etc.
Later I registered for a bin with HRM (Halifax Regional Municipality) and discovered the lengths this place goes to to recycle. We have a big green bin into which we can put anything organic, garden waste, food (peelings, leftovers, meat, veg, egg shells), used paper towels etc. So that's the green bin, then there are the blue bags, these are for tins, bottles, tetrapak, the (hundreds of) plastic bags, 1PETE and 2HDPE plastic containers. Paper is bagged every week, cardboard is bundled (specifically into 2' by 3' by 8" packages!!!). Infact the list of what is actually thrown away and not recycled is smaller that the recycling stuff.
Of course lots of things are refundable (about 5 cents an item) - glass bottles, plastic bottles, tetrapak and who knows what else. As a land of enterprise, every Tuesday morning a man comes around (before the official recyclers) and take all of the refundable stuff out of our bag and presumably collects the 5 cents for each thing. I look forward to seeing this in the snow!