I am always annoyed by the lack of recycling facilities in developing countries; my being annoyed is pretty unreasonable I admit but its still annoying. For many countries it is more cost effective to just import/make more products rather than recycle them so I see things wasted all the time. I do see instances of people reusing things (usually motivated by poverty not by a desire to be environmentally responsible) but not very often.
All this got me to thinking about how products could be reused in developing countries. All sorts of ideas have flitted through my mind but I have no idea how reasonable the ideas are. I see plastic bags in even the poorest countries being used and thrown away *all*the*time* one idea I had was for arid places like Afghanistan to patch them together for use as plastic mulch since water is so precious here (then of course this creates issues of trash but quite often I see trash around anyway so in this instance it would at least be serving a purpose).
The concept of paper recycling seems to be lost on most people but in Kabul paper can be recycled and it is essentially just processed wood chips so at the very least paper can be used as a very effective mulch.
Another idea was using cans as a sort of solar insulation or something like that. I seem to remember reading somewhere a guy that collected soda cans, took the top/bottoms off the cans then nailed the “metal sheet” onto the side of his house which I think helped with heating (cooling?) his house.
There are other not-necessarily-straight-up types of recycling like using gray water (bath/laundry water) for things like toilets. There is also the possibility of composting (my organization probably throws away a liter of used teabags a day (sorry, not sure what other measure of volume to us), uneaten food, and throws out the grass clippings and then wonders why parts of the garden look so pathetic.
The list goes on, I have seen some interesting things in “mother earth” (no I am not a hippie but I still find most of their articles pretty neat) and I am sure other places but I can’t seem to find a blog of third world recycling ideas… if I thought I could come up with enough ideas I’d start the blog myself.
1 comment:
I've just returned from a 4 month volunteer trip to Madagascar and am very interested to return there and help start some sort of recyling program/waste management program. I was researching ideas and found your blog.
Most of your ideas are actually used in Madagascar already as the many of the people are so very very poor. The use any glass, plastic and metal containers over and over again until they disintigrate, and cans are often used as materials for patching. Rice sacks for sails ect. There is hardly any food waste as it is fed to the animals and used as fertilizer ect.
There is little infistructure or market in Mada for recycled materials but I'm wondering how hard it would be to work in that direction.
Have you had any further ideas?
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