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!
2 comments:
Glad to see someone else is composting and reusing! I have to correct one thing. There is recycling in Honduras, though it is not very well known or organized.
What we have been doing for years is to wash and save our cans and plastic containers in a big garbage bag and when it is full, we put it out for the garbage collectors (who otherwise dig through all the nasty trash looking for plastics).
I know that you don't have garbage pickup there, but if you really wanted to, you could save your plastic and cans and take it every now and then to the people at Los Laureles for recycling.
The system has recently changed in La Ceiba and you can read a very interesting article about it at "Here I raise my Ebenezer":
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...unless you live in La Ceiba
awesome la gringa...good news!!! still, we don't buy anything in plastic...just on principle.
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