PLUS BELLE, LA POUBELLE

Hygiene with Eugène

It was a préfet by the name of Eugène Poubelle who in 1883 first ordered that property owners of apartment buildings in Paris provide their tenants with regimented, closed receptacles in which to dispose of their household trash, so that there could be an organized trash collection by the city. It didn't take long for Parisians to begin referring to the receptacles as "poubelles." A fortuitous happenstance considering that the indispensable hygiene measure was indeed a step in rendering the city more beautiful. The above trash bin or poubelle, although not  intended for household trash, is a model selected by the medieval port city of Saint-Valèry-sur-Somme and shows how discretely and nicely such urban amenities can fit into the landscape.

©2015 P.B. Lecron

BE MORE LIKE BEA

Buy in bulk

Close-up of dehydrated vegetable snacks sold in bulk from help-yourself glass bins in a French supermarket.  Bulk buying is more and more widespread in France.

Who is Béa? She's an economical French woman who through her care and concern for our planet and resources has become an international icon and champion of a pared-down and drastically less-wasteful lifestyle. Her home is so uncluttered and clean, and her blog, too!

Originally from Rochefort-du-Gard, a community near Avignon, Béa Johnson started out as a fille au pair in the United States. Today, married with her own family and living in San Francisco, this pretty and très chic queen of parsimony and simplicity has managed her household so that it produces no more than a liter of rubbish per year--and enjoys life more!

If like me, you are appalled by the quantity of rubbish generated in the space of just one day, or if you're wondering how on earth Béa does it, go to her Zero Waste Home blog  for tips or read her book, below, edited in both English and French. She says she doesn't remember the last time she took out the trash. . .

Vocabulary
le déchet:  waste
une poubelle:  a dust-bin, a garbage can; the name originates from its inventor, Eugène Poubelle, a préfet in the Parisian area, who in an 1884 crusade to eliminate loose kitchen rubbish in city streets imposed a rule obliging citizens to contain their trash in the regulation wooden, white iron-lined recipients with covers
encombrer:  to clutter
désencombrer:  to declutter

©2013 P.B. Lecron