No Place for Trash

In the US we take for granted that we have huge landfills and we don't really think about where our trash goes. I put it on the side of the road on trash day and somehow think that it disappears. Here there is no place to put the trash. It's on the side of the road, in yards, and in the ocean. Seeing trash around me makes me realize how much waste people create. It's really bad! In the US you see junk yards with cars, and somehow this makes you feel better because it's all in one place, like the cars belong there and it's okay. Here, cars sit in yards and on the side of the road. They are used for parts as they sit, so eventually all that is left is the skeleton, slowly taken over by nature. Vines grow in, on, and through them, but the car still exists, with no place to go.

Picture all the trash and recycling you neatly bag up in a month, put into your trash cans and recycle bins, and have taken away each week, never thinking of it again. Now picture it sitting in your from yard; maybe some of it is in bags and some is loose, some has blown away to your neighbors yard, and some is stuck in the mud. Then imagine everyone else on your street doing the same thing. Maybe some people centralize their trash in one area, maybe others spread it out so that it isn't all in one pile. Now, instead of just picturing a months worth of waste, picture it accumulating for a year or two (this includes everything you might get rid of). It's overwhelming!

Thankfully people here do not create as much trash as Americans. People don't waste things or buy frivolous things. Yes, there are plastic take out containers, but there isn't as much waste as from take out food here a from restaurants in America. Bottles are used for other things before being thrown out, as are plastic bags. Clothes are worn until they can't be anymore and then are used as rags. If Americans lived here and created all the trash they did in the US it would be totally disgusting.

It was odd the other day when I had a bottle from water and my choice was to bring it into my house, only to have someone else add it to the trash pile outside, or consciously throw it into the trash pile myself. It felt so odd to be purposely throwing a bottle on the ground. I am such a recycler in the US, it's hard to abandoned those habits completely. Maybe while I am here I can encourage people to make take out food containers out of leaves. Sometimes this is done now for breadfruit and taro, and I think it is what people did before the containers were available.

Seeing all the trash here makes me wonder about all the land fills in the US.  People should not waste so much, nor should there be so much packaging!