Trash

What happens to your trash if there is no trash man and no *gasp* recycling service? This problem has plagued us since our arrival. Chris and I are not perfect in our conservation practices, but we do make an effort. We try to conserve energy and water. We recycle and try to reuse what we can. In Sumba, we have drastically reduced the amount of waste we create. Colby is using cloth training pants and is mostly potty trained at this point. (He is scared to do #2 in the toilet. In his defense, the toilet here is a little scary.) Packaging on food is considerably less than in the states. Nothing in Sumba is thrown away until every possible use has been exhausted. Regardless of these changes, we still have trash. This trash has to be dealt with. It is frightening to actually see the trash you accumulate.

 Most people here just toss their trash over the hill or out of sight. The sides of roads and any fields are littered with plastic water bottles and paper trash. Cans and bottles are tossed from car windows when their contents have been drained. We make an effort to pick up trash when we can and to suggest alternatives to slinging it out the window as we barrel down the road to Kodi.

 The real problem is what to do with the trash once we have convinced someone not litter. We usually bring it home with us and add it to our growing pile of waste. Now what? At the moment, our options are not ideal. We can bury it or burn it.

Beer bottles, however, are piling up on our front porch. The bolehs (Westerners) of Bukit Sunyi are gaining quite the reputation with their collection of green glass.

Bottles won’t burn and I have issues with burying them. No one wears shoes here. I refuse to contribute to Sumba’s broken glass collection an risk causing wounds in some poor kid’s feet whose parents won’t take him to the clinic for antibiotics because they owe someone a caribou (a post of another day). We have been able to find uses and places for other items in our trash. Any plastic bottles are quickly requested from locals to use for selling motorbike fuel.

I kept hoping that some solution like the fuel would present itself for the beer bottles. And it did. That’s how things work around here. You just have to voice your need or desire and miraculously something appears. Chris asked Esty for her opinion about the bottles and where they should go. She said she would think. What she really meant was that she would speak to her family and find out if anyone had a need for the boleh’s collection. Her aunt’s family is coming to get the bottles this week since they will be making coconut oil soon and need beer bottles to put the oil in. They sell the oil for about $1 per large bottle.

Similar solutions haven’t presented for other items in our trash yet. We do have a nice little tomato garden now, so a compost pile would make useful fertilizer. We are trying to put together materials for a compost pile, but we have not yet found an ideal location. Dogs and chickens ravage any available food source and anything that smells like it might be a food source. Our attempts so far have just made larger messes. We will keep trying. I wonder what sort of impact this will have on our behavior when we return to the states. I hope we will not fall back into the same old routine. Regardless, any pioneering recyclers out there should head to Sumba. They could use your help.