Put only what is truly compostable in organics, and practice the five containers on a mixed set.
Organics: stricter than it seems
The brown container
WHAT GOES IN: fruit and vegetable scraps, meat and fish, egg, seafood, and nut shells, coffee grounds and tea bags, used napkins and dirty kitchen paper, small plant trimmings.
WHAT DOESN'T — AND THIS MATTERS MORE: diapers, sanitary pads, wet wipes, cigarette butts, floor sweepings, pet hair, animal waste, cat litter. All of this goes in resto. Cooking oil is collected separately.
This isn't a formality. Ley 7/2022 caps contaminants in biowaste at 20% from 2022 and 15% from 2027. Exceeding it is an offense the municipality pays for — so, in the end, residents do, through the tasa de basuras (local waste fee).
THE BAG TRAP. Organics go in compostable bags certified to EN 13432. An ordinary plastic bag doesn't break down in composting — it breaks up into microplastics that stay in the finished compost spread on farmland. Screening removes large pieces, but not the fine fraction.
And: “biodegradable” is NOT “compostable.” Only EN 13432 certification or the “OK compost” label means the bag breaks down at the food's pace. “Biodegradable” without a standard means nothing specific.
The gray container (resto) isn't a “bin for anything” but the last-resort stream: whatever goes in no other bin and has no special collection. If your city has no brown container yet, food waste officially goes here, and that's not an offense.
Lesson notes
The brown container
WHAT GOES IN: fruit and vegetable scraps, meat and fish, egg, seafood, and nut shells, coffee grounds and tea bags, used napkins and dirty kitchen paper, small plant trimmings.
WHAT DOESN'T — AND THIS MATTERS MORE: diapers, sanitary pads, wet wipes, cigarette butts, floor sweepings, pet hair, animal waste, cat litter. All of this goes in resto. Cooking oil is collected separately.
This isn't a formality. Ley 7/2022 caps contaminants in biowaste at 20% from 2022 and 15% from 2027. Exceeding it is an offense the municipality pays for — so, in the end, residents do, through the tasa de basuras (local waste fee).
THE BAG TRAP. Organics go in compostable bags certified to EN 13432. An ordinary plastic bag doesn't break down in composting — it breaks up into microplastics that stay in the finished compost spread on farmland. Screening removes large pieces, but not the fine fraction.
And: “biodegradable” is NOT “compostable.” Only EN 13432 certification or the “OK compost” label means the bag breaks down at the food's pace. “Biodegradable” without a standard means nothing specific.
The gray container (resto) isn't a “bin for anything” but the last-resort stream: whatever goes in no other bin and has no special collection. If your city has no brown container yet, food waste officially goes here, and that's not an offense.
It's all mixed up from here — on purpose
Next comes a trainer on everything in this module. Items come mixed across containers, not in blocks, and that isn't sloppiness.
Interleaving similar categories gives noticeably better learning than blocked practice, especially with visual material, where you have to tell things apart rather than recall them. The side effect: mixed practice feels harder, and it seems like you're doing worse. That very feeling means the method is working.
TRAINER RULES:
— There's no timer. Take as long as you need.
— Mistakes aren't penalized. A miss opens a review: first the question “why not here?”, then a second try, then an explanation of the mechanism.
— Only your first try counts, so the review costs you nothing.
— There is an “I don't know” button: it carries no penalty and beats guessing.
— An item you got wrong will come back at the end.