We burn cardboard and paper in rural areas in the States where there is no trash or recycling service. A lot of our food comes in cardboard boxes, and since the kitchen is nice and there are no good restaurants nearby, our last guests did a lot of cooking. They were our first, and we just hadn't thought the garbage thing through at all . . . until we got home from town (about a 45 minute drive) and found 2 full bins - too full to put the lids on - several bags on the ground around the bins, and garbage everywhere from the cats, raccoons, and a skunk, who had torn into the bags.
We don't - at the moment - have a way to haul away more trash than will fit in the trunk of a car. They left 12-15 40-gallon kitchen bags. I had left 3 empty garbage cans in the house (plastic, paper, and garbage), as well as three extra bags, and they used all of those and bought another box of trash bags.
They did put their glass and plastic bottles in the provided recycle container, but the garbage and paper were mixed, and overwhelming. We had to get someone to haul the two full bins, plus what was around them, to the dump, but it cost $140 to have that done - and that's more than our cleaning fee.
They were perfect guests - all three of them - who left the house very clean, and followed all our house rules. They did a lot of cooking. The countertop was full of boxes of food while they were here. They left some boxes of drinks, and a rice cooker they had either broiught or purchased. They probably went through around 40-50 grocery sacks in the week they were here, and none of the recycling except glass and plastic bottles was separated out, so cardboard six pack holders and boxes of dry-goods were mixed in with cooking and table scraps and liquid, which made it hard to separate out further, and impossible to burn anything (as we only burn "clean.") .
Mom is talking about getting a trailer, so we can haul things to the dump when there's more than just our garbage.... The fee is $45 if you haul it yourself, and perhaps most guests will not leave so much? So far we've only had one group - we're new to this - so I guess we will provide three bins - recycling, burning, and garbage, and see what happens with our next visitors.
Thank you for your imput. Perhaps this first stay was an outlier....!