This is how my rubbish is treated in Dhaka (see above). The man collects my discarded refuse and sorts it in the street. It is a little affronting to see someone right before your very eyes picking through your waste and segregating it for re-use, but at the end of the day when his work is finished, he transports it all away, returns to his own home presumably, and the whole process can be placed safely out of sight and out of mind.
This is how my rubbish is treated in Naogaon (our home near Saburo's project site). My waste is dumped on the vacant lot next to my building (see above). I was encouraged to hurl it directly from my balcony but I demurred and I ask the cleaning staff to take it down instead. Then your neighbours forage through your refuse and carry away the items they can re-use. This woman lives opposite me and she is taking the newspaper I used to wrap my coffee grounds away as fuel for her cooking stove.
This recycling of what I no longer need seems very effective to me. There is no formal garbage collection service in the area and I learned from one of the office administrative staff on the project that this style of rubbish disposal is deliberately employed to create land fill. After a few years, when the "dust" has collected sufficiently, the owner of the land will build here. However, in the case of my non-biodegradable rubbish which is completely useless to man or beast, it remains being tossed around in the wind or lying in full view forever,
This is very disconcerting. Already in Bangladesh, I use less plastic than I have in previous countries, and I have read here that it was the first country in the world to ban plastic bags in 2011. (Can it be true that no other country has implemented a ban yet?). Instead the shops give their customers re-usable jute bags, which as jute is a domestic crop that has fallen out of favour in recent years, is a very clever idea. If like me, you grew up around old jute bales in your dad's wool shed (see here) but that was about it, you can learn more about its versatility here in an article from "The Daily Star" newpaper.
In the old days in Chittagong, I am fairly sure there was a rubbish collection service of some kind. I remember the cows in the streets eating from the rubbish piles but I don't remember plastic being blown around by the breeze along the side of the road. Maybe I have a selective memory? I will have to ask some friends to see what they remember.
Being unable to escape from my rubbish is, "An Inconvenient Truth" and it has changed my outlook more than Al Gore's film ever did. In fact I am pretty sure I avoided watching the film way back when, and I thereby find it rather ironic that I now have my own personal accumulation of plastic, which is very inconvenient and from which I cannot hide!!!
It just goes to show you that life will get you in the end, one way or another; i.e. you can run, but you cannot hide. How ironic that it catches up with me here in Bangladesh. I would never have predicted this before my arrival here for the second time...
These guys would have a blast at our house and any in the area. In one way it is great to see the re-use of rubbish(what we consider to be rubbish)
ReplyDeleteHi Matthew! Thanks so much for reading this. Yes, they would have a field day in Australia. It is gratifying in a way to see it all being put to a further use. In Japan I had to get rid of a lot of old clothes and bits and pieces and it seemed such a waste to leave out still quite serviceable items which would be torn apart simply to reclaim the materials used in them, and then recycled. On the other hand, all the polyethylene I threw out was properly treated and recycled, and that made me feel not so bad. It is humbling to see people like the woman in my picture who every day are looking around to see if there is anything I have discarded on the rubbish dump they can use to make a fire to cook their meals. That's a tough life!
ReplyDeleteI recall concrete square rubbish dumps on the roadside in Khulshi - often presided over by dogs, and overflowing with rubbish! I think they also got picked through for anything of use. One mans rubbish is another's fuel. Chiara
ReplyDeleteYes, I remember them, too Chiara. Perhaps I just assumed there was a collection service but in reality, the rubbish was just left until it was all reallocated (magically)...
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