I have to say comparing the two cities, Parisians are horrible recyclers. The problem is that it’s not really in their culture to have concern for the environment.

First off their outdoor markets: Not sure if you stayed long enough, but if you watched the end of the market, you will notice, a bunch of filthy garbage laying all over the streets which contains unsold fruits and vegetables, plastic bags, dirty food crates, and half eaten food people just drop on the ground. To which the city trashmen come and haul away all in one bin! No compost, no recycling of materials, nothing!

Or for that matter you will find the rest being drained away in the sewers from the daily 30 minute water flood which is used to wash the streets. No sweepers!!

2nd the recycling bins in the apartment buildings. Through my 3 flats’ experience Frenchies don’t really understand the sorting concept. I remember in one of my flats there was a boy moving in and he threw out all the cartons into the regular trash bin, to which I saw and scowled at him, and went ahead and put them in the recycling bin.

On top of that I had an experience with a guardian of the a building who, because the recycling bin was getting full every mid week before it could be taken, she would go ahead and throw the recyclables in the regular bin because that went out days before the recycling men came, just to empty the bin!

And the guardian now won’t even let me throw boxes in the recycling claiming it takes too much space and that I ought to just put it somewhere else on the street.

In general:
The regulations set on what can be recycled and what can’t is insanely limiting! You can’t recycle anything that has dirt on it. Hence if you have a dirty plastic, you must wash it first or they will consider it trash and put it in the regular bin for disposal. What people say is they don’t have the kind of machinery to process dirty recyclables. Waste of water..people!

Also there are a lot of recyclables, even if they have the recyclable symbol and number on them, they just can’t recycle because they don’t have the resources to do it everywhere. You have to go out far outside the city or in the country to find those very large dump sites to recycle those special coded products. That is so sad!!

And controversially, companies pay a fee to support the recycling foundation, which gives them a nice fancy special “recycling logo” on their product to make it look like they are green-friendly. But this is not a logo that says the packaging is recyclable, it’s just a logo that says they paid a certain fee to support the foundation.

I remember when I was in Seattle we would get fined if we had too much trash. I think that would be a perfect idea for Paris. Considering all the problems the culture has on respecting the environment, where green is only a trend and not a way of real living, I’d say if this law was implemented, Paris may not have to thrive on tourism alone to bring in the money@!

So no, France is not green, the French are not green. They are a murderous bunch who hates the environment and environmentalists.

You’re right about the French knowing where their food comes from aswell… it is part of their pride to know the provenance of food and adds to their love affair with cuisine that the rest of us, more interested in quantity not quality, seem to have forgotten.

Yes the Paris subway is great and we used it to go everywhere. However, the NYC subway system is equally as good and very widely used so I did not feel if warranted mentioning. We also took the RER and found it to be pretty similar to NJ Transit or the Long Island Railroad. Both excellent mass transit systems in their own rights.

One thing I forgot to mention, which Samantha reminded me of, were the lights in the hallways of our hotel were on a motion sensor. When the elevator door opened the lights would turn on which was a great way to conserve energy.

While it is true that 4 days is not enough time to really see how Parisians really live, I do believe we got a decent flavor for the city. I don’t claim to be an expert, my post was a summary of my observations.

I know that being a tourist dose not truly show the real workings of a city. But we did a few “non-touristy” things like walking into the supermarket and shopping at the outdoor market in Versailles. Our observations were consistent pretty much everywhere we went. And I would bet we were the only tourists in the supermarket.

Regarding recycling and where does it go — I have had my suspicions about whether the materials we sort are really being recycled or just going in the trash in the US. I used to live in Manhattan and would watch the recyclables go into the recycling truck and get crushed…thinking “no way is that all going to be sorted and recycled”. I have searched for information on this, but have not found any to reveal the real deal. I think this is a good subject to do some digging into and may do some virtual dumpster diving to get the truth.

I was under the assumption that there were no GMO’s in France. I just discovered in a story from the Agence France Presse (AFP) that stated “GM crops cover less than one percent of farmland in France” – To read this story use this link: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i5dIJWPgTCpDhOmApk4GtcXn3vow

However, if French are requiring clear GMO labeling, they are doing a much better job then the US is doing. In opposition to what the Europeans are doing about GMO’s (having a loud and healthy debate) the U.S. government is pushing GMO’s at every turn on behalf US agribusinesses. As reported on Grist yesterday “A $770 million food-aid package proposed by the Bush administration may also aid U.S. agribiz, as the feds have slipped in language promoting the use of genetically modified crops in developing countries.” (http://www.grist.org/news/2008/05/19/gmo_aid/)

And for those visiting Paris soon, you must check out, Fat Tire Tours Paris — it’s a must. My husband and I did a bike tour around Versailles gardens. We took the train (the RER) out there with the bikes and spent the day riding around. We had a picnic in the gardens, toured the palace and rode back. It was amazing. (http://www.fattirebiketoursparis.com/)

Four days is barely enough time to recover from jet lag, much less understand another culture, but some of Melissa’s observations are accurate.

Recycling in Paris has been slow in coming, and most recycling bins are also full of trash, whether in public places or apartment buildings–despite a posters and regular reminders from the city government about what to recycle and where to put it.

The plastic bag issue is a huge problem and a relatively recent one; even 20 years ago, most people brought their own caddies and bags for shopping. Some supermarkets have done away with free bags, and the city of Paris has planned to eliminate free shopping bags at all stores (when is uncertain, as the plan has met with opposition from many stores).

Velib has been a huge success in Paris (as in other French cities), and not just for tourists. Every year there are more bikes circulating in Paris, and the critical mass seems to be forcing some respect for them on the road. However, bike lanes have been built very slowly and taxis and motorcyclists are less than accommodating (I stopped biking after I got pregnant and will not take my toddler on my bike in Paris for fear of being side-swiped). Although Paris isn’t as humid as NYC, it’s rainy and chilly for most of the year, which isn’t very conducive to happy biking either.

Finally, I love the food in France, although most market stalls don’t sell local products (especially in Paris–though there is a growing CSA movement). What’s more, it is difficult to be vegetarian and almost impossible to be vegan. The menus of many vegetarian restaurants make you feel as if you have to suffer for your choice, which reinforces the message of “regular” restaurants. Historically, French restaurants flourished thanks to the bourgeoisie, and meat was a sign of wealth. Although the first vegetarian restaurant opened in Paris in 1908, for many French people, eating only vegetables is a reminder of the scarcities of WWII rather than a choice.

By the way, there are GMO crops in France. Currently, GMO foods must be labeled and are generally unpopular. The French Parliament is set to vote on Thursday on a law that would guarantee the right to buy GMO or non-GMO foods in France–and would also make it a crime for demonstrators to destroy GMO crops.

One of the reasons recycling has reduced in popularity here (in Germany anyway) is because the locals have uncovered some dirty little secrets in the industry: you’re essentially just sorting your plastic disposables out to be burned. It’s the same in the US - just that the plastics get sent to China first to be burned - but it’s made some here a bit disillusioned with the whole industry. On the other hand, the glass bottles are reused - and you pay a deposit to do so - so they’re not often ditched on the roadside and you don’t see plastic bags to collect them. In that way, the EU is way ahead of NYC (which charges a deposit but has a miserable return record).

Velib as an idea was begun in other European cities and has now transferred to DC and Portland (and perhaps more US cities, just not NYC) and it generally speaking works well in Paris for the general population for a few reasons: petrol costs more, cars are more expensive, and the Metro doesn’t run late at night - when many of the riders need a way to get home after a few-too-many, one of the reasons the bikes are equally, if not more, popular in Lyon, which has less tourists. But Velib is also something to be found namely where the tourists are, which suggests that it’s not necessarily for the ordinary Parisians (though when we visited in December there were just as many tourists as Parisians riding around). Could you envision tourists biking around Times Square without problems? Perhaps Central Park but for a Midwestern-seeing-NYC-for the first time, as I once was, a trip down Broadway by bike is a deathwish.

For more on the food issues, it might be worth looking at the subsidies offered to farmers in both the US and France, the EU’s rejection of GMO foodstuffs and tight controls on biodiversity (they’re currently holding a UN conference down the road here and it’s a hot button in the proceedings), and the emphasis that people in Europe put on eating local (hence the immense amounts of meat eaten in these northern countries, despite the poor eco record of raising animals for consumption). You’ll find the “expensive” products are still actually way way below what the market price should be. The US could learn a lot from Paris, even if the stuff we consider eco isn’t what it might be.

One really great idea we noticed in our two Spain hotels was that the hotel room lights can’t be turned on unless the room key is inserted into a slot in the room. This also means that when you leave and take your room key with you, all of the lights in your room turn off. This is great for saving electricity and the hotels money.

Another thing to mention is transportation, within and between cities. The whole two weeks that we were in Europe, we only used two taxis. Those two times were because we had just arrived into town relatively late and were feeling too lazy to figure out the local transit at the time. The rest of the trip we used trains to get between our locations and used buses and metros within the cities we were visiting. Major US cities usually have pretty good public transportation, but we have a major need for an upgrade in countrywide train access and support.