Trouble with the law.

So today as I was going to class and I saw I had a letter in my mailbox from the city of Aix-en-Provence. Curious, I immediately opened it and started reading while I walked. Turns out it was from….the environment police.

Pause.

The environment police. Here in Aix/France I swear there are close to 10 different kinds of cops roaming around. There are municipal police, there are national police, there are heavy duty military style police, there are unarmed security officers, and there are the environment police. Okay so maybe there aren’t 10, but I know for a fact that there are at least those five.

What the environment police do is essentially ticket people for littering or putting their garbage out at the wrong time. There isn’t one designated “garbage day” like there is in the States. Instead, you’re just supposed to put your neatly bagged trash in the street/sidewalk right next to your building after 7pm, and then someone comes to pick it up. This has actually led to much confusion in my household. If the trash can’t be out before 7pm, when is the latest it can go out? We’ve put it out at 730, to have it taken away within a few minutes. We’ve put it out at midnight to have it taken away at some point before morning. We know not what goes on. Furthermore, we’re not entirely sure what days they come around. Is today a holiday? Will the trash men come? If we put trash out Saturday night…will they pick it up or is that too close to Sunday? We lack answers to these questions. All we know is that the environment police are stricter with whatever mysterious policies they have because of the street we happen to live on. It’s very small, very historic in terms of the rest of the neighborhood, and it’s very touristy. But up until now we haven’t had any problems.

So I get this letter saying that at 8am on March 17^th they noticed I had left my garbage outside of my building when it wasn’t supposed to be there. This probably means that the night before either me or one of my roommates took the trash out “too late” for pickup (again, we’re unaware of any time limit). You might be asking yourself…how do they know that I did it? Well what the environment police do is actually open garbage left outside and look for clues to see to whom it may belong, so someone can get in trouble. There must have been something in the trash with my name on it, because I’m the only one in my apartment to receive one of these notices. I talked to one of the ladies who works for my program and she said that I’ll probably get another letter in the mail at some point making me pay some undetermined fine. Bullshit.

How’s that for an invasion of privacy? Even garbage isn’t sacred. I’m shredding to bits anything that ever has my name on it so the goddamn trash police will have to put together a puzzle if they ever want to try this again.

America, I miss you and your simple garbage law.