We live in the country, and it turns out great that we don't have garbage pickup, because we also have fantastic and nearly complete recycling through a community facility that separates everything... batteries here, cream containers there, corks in this bin, foam there, electronics talk to that gal. Plus we compost or bury everything organic. It means we pay $7 for a bag of garbage and we have to drop it off near the grocery store, but we only have _one_ black bag every six weeks or so for a household of four.