TRASH in the Jungle

Living in the jungle does lack certain modern conveniences those in the first world take for granted. WHAT would you do if there was no garbage pickup?

i have always been an ardent reducer of waste and enthusiastic recycler, but....

There is no recycling in Honduras (!!!) and garbage pickup has been spotty at best. We no longer have the luxury of recycling glass, plastic, paper or cans. We refuse to add these to the local landfill.

Most locals either toss their garbage along the side of a rural road or burn it…neither one a good option for us. We are always very vigilant about the amount of garbage we create in the first place.

Since our diet consists mainly of fresh fruits and veggies that come un-packaged from farms and markets, we compost all our kitchen scraps; reducing a fair amount of garbage right there.

We receive no mail or read newspapers or magazines, and add whatever paper or cardboard that comes into the house to the compost pile.

We avoid buying things in plastic bottles, but the inevitable errant plastic container gets washed and re-used a million ways…for our home made cleaning products, cut off and used to grow seedlings in, hold paint or varnish, the top becomes a funnel, etc.

We hold on to wide mouthed glass bottles that olives come in, using them as sprouting jars or to hold grains, seeds, herbs. For the others like olive oil and vinegar bottles, we bought a glass bottle cutter in the states and intend to make drinking glasses, hurricane lamps for candles, vases and give them to folks in the area.

To reduce daily accumulation of dog-food cans we are transitioning our pets to a diet of rice, raw meat and eggs to better their health and “weaving” the large heavy plastic bags the dry food comes in to make shopping bags and rugs. take a look at the photo above. the little change purse was made from snack wrappers found on the roadside.

We leave any rare “packaging” like blister packs at the store.

So this lack of “convenience” has morphed into a militant green solution to reduce our “garbage” to just one or two kitchen sized bags a month…which we bring into the “city” on our motorcycle and put into dumpsters.

Sometimes an inconvenience turns into a blessing.

REDUCE and REUSE….

Viva la Simple Deep Green Revolution!

done with cars.

garth and i visited 3 states in 16 days. nj, pa and iowa, visiting friends, and family. all went smooth enough and really can't express how happy i am to be back in the rainforest, with the pets, the plants, the river, the forest.

one thing i have discovered while in the states, is how DONE i feel with CARS. sure, i can appreciate the convenience of traveling from this place to that rather easily, but i dont like them. big hot stinky hunks of metal rolling on synthetic rubber, propelled by oil/gas, across paved nature, past meccas of commerce. sheesh. i'm done with the noise they make as well. the throaty growl and thrum of the motor, the twangy woosh and whine of tires on macadam...irritating as a throng of buzzing mosquitoes. don't even get me started about car alarms or horns....upsets my birth right to peace and quiet.

but stateside living is ALL about cars. fancy new cars, SUV's, huge shiny pickups that could haul cattle (in suburban NJ? sheesh)...car culture in the inth degree! we have become enslaved to metal and oil. the fumes are changing our atmosphere, we are sucking all the oil out of the earth, and it only took 60 years! look what we have done :(

we are sad, angry and depressed over this incredibly nasty, life changing , nature killing oil spill in the gulf. but truly,we are all responsible BECAUSE, everyone drives cars!

it's been 5 years since i sold my car. it was a really nice one...my LAST car. i spent a small fortune on it used. it was a fancy sporty german made thing..heavy as a whale, red convertible, heated seats, bose speakers, even in the headrest...guess i had to leave in style...get all my "car" thrill played out. DONE.

i am pretty much finished driving at this point. garth takes care of that. i'm a happy passenger. we bought a 125cc honda motorcycle that takes us from this place to that. it's tiny as "motos" go. we have called her "rosalita".

we strapped a milk crate unto the back of her...this we use to transport our groceries. you would be amazed by how much we can carry. what doesn't fit in the crate we strap to the gas tank or stuff into our back packs. often my hands are holding pipes, brooms, gutters...what ever we might need finds a way back down the long rutted, jungle road, to our home on rosalita.

when it rains, we wear rain gear. otherwise the sun shines on our faces, the wind blows thru our clothes, i can smell my surroundings (rainforest) and even tho it is motorized...feels much more natural. and i love the fact that we use only $5 of gas a month...A MONTH!

i certainly save on gas but i also save on my carbon footprint. this is of the utmost importance.

so this is part of our green simplicity plan. no car, we walk to places near by, use the moto for local trips over a few miles (no bicycles, dirt road too rocky and steep) and buses for places farther away and planes (sheesh) for longer journeys. maybe one day i will be done with planes. until then, we can all offset our carbon pollution by supporting www.carbonfund.org.

we must make changes to protect the future generations of all sentient beings. amen and om.