Waste

The by product of our lives and all we consume. I have been amazed to find that it takes me a whole week to fill up a plastic grocery bag of trash (a miniscule amount to my accumulation back in the states). Most of my waste tends to be organic food wastes which gets chucked out the back door for the neighbor’s chickens or dogs to eat. At home I was determined to throw all of my waste into the huge compost pile outback, but here I figure I can aid the food chain in a different way with my debris. One downside here is the lack of recycling. It pains me to know that a perfectly recyclable product will be thrown away…which begs the question. Where will it be thrown? Here in my town the trash is collected erratically by donkey cart. A man comes along with a donkey and rings a little bell and you throw what you have in the trash cart. The trash apparently ends up somewhere in the side of a hill. Though the waste removal practices are not the best, people tend to be much more efficient at the first two Rs, reduce and reuse. I once imagined totting my plastic bottles all the way to Quito where I could find somewhere to recycle, until I realized that my neighbor actually wanted them. The government is implementing new environmental taxes on plastic bottles and bags, leaving consumers to reevaluate the sustainability of their purchase decisions.