What's the beauty in Poubelle?
Poubelle, means garbage in French.
When my cousin Julie, came to visit us in France, she commented to my husband that the French language had beautiful sounding words for mundane objects. Take the word pamplemousse, rolls right off your tongue, it means, "grapefruit" Or the word gendarmerie its counter part in english is, "police station" Or the word, POUBELLE which translates into English as "garbage".
Remember, "Beauty and the Beast," the adaptation from Walt Disney? BEAUTY, was called Belle, which means Beautiful in French. So the French word for garbage has beauty dumped right inside it!
In Paris, Saint-Ouen Marche aux Puces (flea markets,) were created at the end of the 19th-century. At this time Paris was walled. Outside the walls of Paris, where construction was prohibited, there were open fields. The poor shopkeepers went there to sale their wares due to three major reasons:
1) The clolera epidemic in 1832, new regulations prohibited markets in the center of Paris.
2) Paris was going through major revamping by the mastermind Haussmann,
3) And if you lived outside the wall, or sold there you needn't pay any taxes!
Now, there was a man named, Monsieur Poubelle who created the idea for garbage cans and garbage pick-up service. 30,000 ragmen and women made their living off the garbage of the very rich.
Set up in the zone where construction was prohibited, they sold rags, metal, food and whatever else they found in the poubelles.
People got in the habit of coming to Saint-Ouen to buy second hand goods.
In 1920's, organized market were opened with the demolition of the walls of Paris.
Poubelle! Someone's Garbage "can" be beautiful!
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