One Man's Trash … Is Another Man's Treasure?

Mini-post time.  By Bex!  To tide you over while we (David) work (works) on the next big post.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter T.  T is for trash.  Has this question been keeping you up at night: What do Bex! and Dave do with their trash on Ometepe?  Well, tonight you can sleep because the answer is coming up, right after these words from our sponsors.

"Toña - bringing Eastern gear to Nicaragua since 2013"

"When your nacatamale needs pep or your huevos revueltos need zip, turn to…         Lizano Chile"

"Nothing cleans up delicious pork grease like Axion soap"

Thank you sponsors.  We now return to your program already in progress.

We have four waste streams at our casita.

1.  Compostable

If it's organic, we toss it in the compost.  This is all our food scraps - watermelon rinds, mango pits, coconuts with the agua de coco sucked out, tomato stems, orange peels, carrot tops, banana leaves from nacatamales, pineapple rinds, chicken bones, etc.

Our compost pile isn't much to look at.  That's because we also call it our 'jungle animal feeding zone'.  After the dogs, chickens, pigs, iguanas, magpie jays, grackles, vultures, spiders, and ants have a go, there's pretty much nothing left to actually decay.  And if by some chance there is anything remaining, the warm and humid climate makes quick work of breaking it down.

2.  Burnable

If it's paper waste, we burn it.  This is cereal boxes, used printer paper, etc.  This is also all TP.  Yeah, it's gross, but Central American plumbing and water pressure lack the strength and oomph to handle TP.  It goes in a little trash can in the bathroom and is burned regularly.

3. Fit-In-A-Two-Liter-Bottle-Able

If it's not organic and non-burnable, we next check if it's small enough or flexible enough to fit through the mouth of a two-liter bottle - say a coke bottle or a water bottle.  This is all plastic packaging and bags, batteries, dead white board pens, plastic straws, etc.  If it fits, we stuff it into a bottle, packing it in until we just can't fit another shred of plastic in.  

We only fill one of these every 3-4 weeks.

Then we cap off the bottle and bring it to Hacienda Merida.  They use these two-liter bottles in construction of outside tables and chairs and of the school buildings.  This approach captures the waste and keeps it out of the environment, plus reduces the amount of cement needed.  For more on this cool solution to the waste problem, check out these YouTube videos about the Sustainable Table and about the Garbage Palace School.  Or read about constructing the first school building here.

4.  Our Own Personal Landfill

If our trash doesn't fit into categories 1, 2, or 3, we're out of options.  This trash gets placed in our own personal landfill, an area out back where we toss whatever's left over.  This includes glass and plastic bottles (sans lids, since we have a re-use program for those), tetra-pack cartons from orange juice and chocolate milk, empty printer cartridges, beer cans, and other miscellany.

There is no opportunity for recycling in Merida.  However, reuse is actively practiced.  We use old glass jars to keep homemade vinaigrette; we collect clean bottle caps for sorting activities with the kids; we print or write on both sides of our printer paper before burning it; we buy local honey packaged into 12oz soda bottles; we made a hummingbird feeder from an old Coke bottle and an old Axion tub; we use the box our fan came in as a printer stand.

I love these!  They are like Nicaraguan Legos.  If I ever stop playing with them, we'll take them to class.

Here, hummingbird!  Come here, little buddy.

One good thing we experience in Merida is that there isn't as much packaging.  Many items are sold as eaches - e.g. eggs and pencil sharpeners.  And other things can be bought in bulk - rice, sugar, flour, beans, etc.  So, instead of coming in their own wasteful individual packaging, the store buys them in bulk and sells them to us as is, with maybe a plastic bag (which we can easily squish in a 2-liter bottle after we've reused it a couple times).

One bad thing we've experience in Merida is the trash left behind when "well meaning folks" come.  Twice now, we've experienced this phenomenon.  In November 2013, Fuente Pura, the bottled water division of the national beer company, came to Ometepe and did a great recycling event.  Children from Merida and Balgüe came and could exchange 20 recyclables - plastic bottles, glass bottles, or cans - for a pack of school  supplies - notebooks, pencils, sharpener, eraser, colored pencils.  It was a great event, well attended, and hundred of bags of recyclables were taken away by Fuente Pura.  (We wrote about it here.)  However, the school supply packs were put together at Hacienda Merida.  We helped with this assembly line task and noticed after the event that all the packaging was left behind.  All the card board boxes, paperboard boxes, and - worst of all - all the shrink wrap.

In March 2014, a group from South Carolina visited.  They stayed at Hacienda Merida and were doing construction and outreach projects at a school for the deaf on Ometepe and within the communities.  They came and did some great work and brought donations with them.  These donations included things like personal toiletry items, which had been purchased in bulk at Costco or a similar ridiculously too large store.  With these donations also came all the packaging.  Again, great bundles of shrink wrap, blister packs from sports gear given away, plastic - all left behind on the edge of a national park and biosphere reserve.

Both groups came and did something really good on the island.  But, both groups left behind a LOT of trash in this beautiful place.  Maybe next time they can leave the extra packaging at home.  (hint hint)

So, what do YOU do with your trash?  Where does it go?  If you put it out at the curb, what happens next?  While it may seem strange that we just throw our trash in the back yard, it's not so different from what happens back home.  In places I've lived in the U.S., solid waste either goes to a landfill or to an incinerator.  Hmmm, let me think.  That sounds a lot like burning paper in our fire pit and throwing plastic bottles in a pile in the back yard.  Except that instead of each person having their own pile, in the US we make one big pile all together.  And except that instead of being able to see the pile when you walk around the corner of your house, it's out of sight and thus out of mind.  On the other hand, the pile of trash is at least all in one place back home, rather than spread out across multiple yards, down the edges of the streets and paths, etc.

Trash is a problem everywhere in the world, of course.   In a small village on an island in a lake in a country with no infrastructure to deal with garbage, it's a more hands on, deal with it every day, personal thing here.  We do our best here, dealing with it as described in this post.  

Back home, be aware of excess packaging!  Make requests of stores and manufacturers to cut down on packaging, especially petroleum based products.  If you buy something with a ridiculous amount of packaging, unwrap it in the parking lot and leave the trash for the store to deal with.  That sends a message!  As you might have noticed in the burnables picture, we have a lot of the same brands down here - Nestle, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, WalMart, etc.  Not to mention the sugar and junk food purveyors like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Frito-Lay & Co.  Getting these multinationals to change their practices makes a difference all over the world!