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| City garbage tractor cleaning the streets in Galle |
Sri Lanka is a truly beautiful and unique country. The people are kind, gentle and laid-back. But like every country in the world they have to deal with garbage.
And I keep wondering what do you do with the rubbish of 20 million people living on an island which is roughly twice the size of
the island we live on in Canada? We have a population of only 759,000 on half the space. Everything we buy in Sir Lanka is wrapped in plastic or styrofoam and comes in a plastic bag, and all of that packaging has to go somewhere.
We learned from one host that there is no garbage pick up in his town as we know it at home. Realistically how could there be? His yearly property taxes are 150 rupees/year (about $1.15). Instead responsible home owners are to bury their own garbage on their property or burn it. As a visitor it has made me think about how everything I put in the garbage will be buried by my host.
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| The beach in Negombo |
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Obviously our garbage at home is only taken off our property to a communal giant hole - out of sight, out of mind. But a lot of the garbage here doesn't make it to a hole. It floats in the ocean, it lays on the beach or it becomes its own heap on the side of the road. Which got me thinking about how shockingly clean the beach and the ocean is in Mirissa compared to the other two beach towns we have been to.
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| Clean beaches in Mirissa |
Coincidentally, I read a small news brief about how the Coast Guard had been put on Dengue eradication duty by participating in clearing tonnes of garbage off Mirissa Beach this year in order to "reduce mosquito breeding grounds" and "... to have clean waters and beaches before the next whale watching season" (read tourist infestation). Hmmm.
So many thoughts about our planet, my life in Canada where we are big into composting, reducing, reusing, recycling, and imposing plastic bag bans and so on. I am a fan of all these things... including clean beaches.
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| Mirissa Beach |
We have a friend in recycling and waste management and always learn something interesting and insightful during our conversations about the waste of the world, and our own waste issues. Did you know on our island "recycled" glass (except bottles) doesn't have a purpose and is one giant pile mid-island waiting for someone to buy it to reuse it? It essentially has no re-purpose, yet I would ordinarily buy things in jars over plastic any day and feel good about it. (I should mention that there are lots of things recycled glass can be used for we just don't have anyone on the island wanting to do them at this time).
Two different countries, similar issues. Where does our waste go? It piles up.
I have been working on a post in my head about this exact same issue. We went to the beach the other day and a tide had brought in so much garbage from the ocean. We borrowed rakes and cleaned up part of the beach and I was so disgusted with it all.
ReplyDeleteThailand has the same issue as Sri Lanka, everything is over packaged. Everything goes in plastic bags. Much of the garbage gets thrown on the street and makes its way to the waterways.
In Canada we have solutions to this problem. We compost, we buy in bulk and use our own reusable bags, we grow our own food, we reuse and recycle.
Here it is hard to wrap our head around how we can avoid all of the garbage. We have been buying the big reusable bottles of water and then re-filling our small bottles, we are refusing bags and reusing the ones we have.... I'm at a loss as to what else I can do though!
Thanks for your thoughtful comments Amy! We sound like we do the same things as you in Canada and have been doing the things you mentioned as well (refilling from large water bottles etc) while traveling but it doesn't really seem like enough does it? And often trying to get less packaging only leads to confusion. LOL!
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