As a child of the 80's growing up in the US of A, I was raised under the 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' mantra. The phrase was as familiar as Stop, Drop, and Roll or This is your Brain on Drugs. To improperly dispose of a plastic bottle was an act of sacrilege in a world of neatly labeled disposal bins. Television even suggested we could recycle our way to a healthy planet where the animals sang songs and we were Free to Be You and Me. Or something like that. It was as if abiding by the three R's would bring utopia.
Even though this notion no longer holds water in my pragmatic adulthood, I continue to experience enormous cognitive dissonance when garbage is not sorted properly. It's a cultural expectation that has became a sort of dogma ingrained into my 2007 psyche. And I'm not alone. Supermarkets even reward this good behavior with nickels - positive reinforcement that would make B.F. Skinner proud!
Thus, south Africa was problematic because the infrastructure to deal with mountains of plastic, aluminum, and metal has not been instituted. The country has not adopted a recycling program and trash overflows with bottles and cans. Given there are so many critical societal concerns, the environment is understandably not of immediate highest priority. So while our American lifestyle affords us the leisure, time, and resources to spend on the three R's, how might we create incentives that encourage these kind of practices in the developing world as well?
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A tough issue in a place of our world that has even tougher problems of out of control AIDS, civil wars, Darfur, large scale loss of family on a daily basis, no food or clean water, etc. Sadly, I do not know.
Thank God I'm alive , I will keep His planet to Thrive
Health concerns aside, I think some educational value can be taken from living near mountains of trash. I cannot speak for life in South Africa, but I did spend two years in Benin (in West Africa) teaching high school math in the Peace Corps. Being an extremely poor nation, Benin had no large scale recycling or garbage disposal services. I lived in a small complex with six Beninese families, and all the trash we generated went into a small nearby ravine to be scavenged by goats and burned regularly.
Having trash in such an "in your face" location significantly curbs production, definitely compared to America where our garbage and recyclables are basically "out of sight, out of mind" once they're put in their respective bins. If every neighborhood had to have its own mini-landfill, I'm sure more people would be in favor of "reduce, reuse, recyle".
Also, while most third world countries don't have recycling facilities (except for the large scale, toxic reclamation work they do for the developed nations), I hope you got to see the large amount of reusing that third world inhabitants do out of necessity.
Funny. In the US of A where I grew up. we learned that recycling was an expensive conspiracy. I didn't see trash sorting until I was 27. What planet did you say you were from?
llewelly,
At R.P.Connor School in Suffern, NY, it was sort of like this.
South Africa's unwillingness to recycle is indeed a source of frustration. Personally this reached a climax recently while I worked as member of a DEAT team (Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism - South Africa's environmental custodian) on one of their sub-Antarctic bases. As environmental officer I coordinated, amongst others, waste separation and I must say that for the entire year our team did their part in this exercise. Waste separation became part of our daily routine.
Once back in South Africa I followed up on the waste separation and to my dismay I realised that we did most of the separation for nothing. It was painful to see how our carefully sorted 13 month's supply of plastics, burnables and cardboard boxes were simply thrown together, shipped away together to be dumped together. Probably to be burned together. Lovely carbon released into the atmosphere -at least we'll sleep warm the next century. Even though DEAT seemed interested in recycling glass and tins, I felt that everything was in place for every single piece of waste to be recycled. No need for more grassland to be replaced by pine plantations to keep up with the demand for paper. And this is the crux of the matter for me: how can South Africa move towards a RRR-society if the country's environmental custodian shows no commitment to this cause?
Yes, perhaps we as individuals can make a difference. But take note that South Africa's waste management infrastructure is either lacking or defunct. Take for example the singletons of 'recycling containers' placed in some neighbourhoods. Though a good idea in theory, the container close to me house hasn't been cleared for months. A mountain of glass in the middle of my neighbourhood - how lovely!
Sheril correctly highlighted that societal problems enjoy priority in many developing countries - both for individuals and governments. But won't some societal concern be addressed through proper waste management? For example, a substantial proportion of South Africa's population are without jobs. Yet the recycling niche (and the associated job opportunities) are simply not utilised. I fear the challenges are currently too many for a bottom-up approach to make an impact. And I fear that with DEAT being lethargic in the waste management issue, it will take some time before specifically South Africans will make the three R's part of their daily routine.
It would help if we actually had a use for the stuff. Here in California the true selling price of scrap aluminum is 30¢ a pound. That's what recyclers will pay for the metal itself, the other $1.25 is a refund of the sin tax the state puts on drinks in aluminum cans. The value of glass? 0.02¢ a pound. Or 1¢ for five pounds. Nobody really wants the stuff. It's make work do-goodism with no benefit to society.
I've noticed that although there is not much official momentum for recycling in SA, there is actually an underground waste separation industry - when the bins are put out on the street, before they are collected you see people picking through them - for plastic, paper, and metal which they then sell. It happens at a larger scale at rubbish tips, too, I've heard. Presumably all this is limited to materials which somebody is willing to pay money for, so I'm not sure about the overall environmental impact.
I wish they recycled more than just a few of the options. I end up trashing so much, just because they don't accept that particular number.
And while you are fixing that, please also fix our obsession with packaging. Why individually pack EVERYTHING? I don't want to buy the world a coke, I want to buy them a tupperware to put their individual portion into!
Woo! Nice to put in a shout-out to Connor School, Sheril! As a product of the same schools (and community) as Sheril, I've had the recycling mantra drummed into my head as well. It only became stronger in adulthood after spending four years living in Toronto, where a lack of suitable space to expand landfills has forced the city government to run an extremely comprehensive recycling program. After the 'green bins,' which collect organic waste, were instituted, enough garbage was diverted that the leaflets distributed by the public works department listed the handful of items left that actually belong in the trash.
To Mr. Kellogg -
You have addressed the core difficulty in applying recycling philosophies: it's not sufficiently profitable. And yet, many nations with stagnant economies need just this sort of "make-work do-goodism" in order to profitably employ an increasingly unnecessary populace (economically speaking). For an example, just look at London's infamous rag-and-bone men so wonderfully (and, I'm told, accurately) depicted in the popular fiction of the 1800s.
The vast amount of waste generated by modern society out of sheer laziness disgusts me. And yet.. I'm quite certain that applied knowledge, backed by sufficient capital and operating efficiently, can manage to reprocess garbage profitably. Oh, maybe not profitably enough to pay Minimum Wage... but then, what percentage of the world's population makes Minimum Wage?
The solution, of course, is to let capitalism handle the problem of recycling. Which means you, by the way - all the readers with money they're spending on vacations, Gucci, Rolexes, and HDTV. Put your money where your mouth is, and invest in recycling-for-profit operations!
For example - support your local used book store.
(Obvious plug.)