"Your life depends on water, don't through debris or trash in the river"
Throughout Ecuador, at pretty much every bridge across a river, one sees these kinds of signs. The message is a beautiful one: we are part of a bigger ecosystem, a bigger community which we rely on and need to work to protect. These messages, produced and propagated by the government, are reflected in the actions and thoughts of many people and organizations that I have encountered here. I see local paddlers picking up trash at the takeout and have heard of river cleanups being organized by the Ministry of the Environment. During interviews with locals I have heard time and time again that the number one thing people can do here to protect rivers is to not through trash in the rivers. People in the smaller indigenous communities around Tena tell me that they are proud to have central trash pick up locations in their villages. The message seems to have been well socialized and spread throughout.
But is the message always reflected in action? The reality is no, it is not.
"We protect the environment"
Here we see a sign along a main road that hopes to remind people to take care of their environment, to recycle, to not throw their trash off the edge of the road. But right at its base we can also see the evidence of trash and plastic bottles littering the ground. Why does this contrast, a contrast between physical message and action, between verbal message and action, exist? One reason that has come to my attention here has to do with time and history. The city of Tena, although by its size it is hard to believe, is really only about 60 years old. About 60 years ago there were no roads that reached this far (it was a 8 day walk to Quito), there was no such thing as inorganic trash, people lived a nomadic lifestyle in the jungle and all their trash was organic and would decompose quickly when tossed aside. Then 5 US missionaries arrived in the area and with them came many things: education, Christianity, jobs, a new kind of life, and along with all of this also came materialism and inorganic trash. One thing that importantly did not arrive along with this new idea of materialism was education about how to dispose of this new kind of waste. So people disposed of it as they always had: throwing it into the river and the forest. People here tell me that although now there is much more education around trash disposal, these culturally learned actions still exist and may contribute to the dissonance between message and action that seems to surround trash here.
This also brings be back to what I described in one of my earlier blogs as a "successful recycling program." As I have learned more about this area, I still believe that this program is successful. However, I also think it is obvious that it is a new program and hasn't fully settled in. When asking about the efficacy of this program, one interviewee stopped me to ask where I was from. When I responded that I was from the US, he explained the program in this way "as a developed country the US has been focusing on these issues for a much longer time. This program only really got started here I think about 7 years ago. It has done a lot to help, but there is a lack of time for its messages to be effective." In general, people in the area are excited about the program and seem to understand, at least on a surface level, that it is important to recycle and not throw plastic in the river. So what is lacking?
"We protect the environment. Don't through trash in the river"
From my observations around town, it seems that one piece that is lacking is infrastructure to support the program. There are very few, if any, recycling bins in most public areas and pretty much none in private spaces. In addition, the government is relying on poor people (who want to make money of selling plastic to the government) and occasional trucks that drive around town at night honking (waiting for people to bring out their plastic to it) to collect the plastic. I have also observed that there is a lack of a true understanding of why these things are important. I had a very interesting conversation with an official at the Ministry of the Environment who spends a lot of her time training and leading workshops to help people here better understand environmental issues and how their actions impact the environment. Something she comes across often is that people don't believe that their actions hurt the environment, they do not see how the trash and plastic they throw in the river impacts it. This seems to be true partially because the river current pulls the problem downstream and because they have not been educated on the impacts of trash etc on ecosystems. In addition, very few people travel far from the community or city they live in and therefore do not see how their actions affect people and places further downstream. It seems to me that this lack of deep understanding may cause people to not be motivated to follow through with recycling and trash messages.
So what can we take away from these observations and conversations? Is all lost and we should just turn to cynicism? NO!!!
Things are changing here and improving. Although the disposal of trash and recycling is not perfect, it is much better than it was 10 years ago. Although the understanding is not universal or as deep as it could be, there is a beginning of an understanding and people view recycling and trash management as an important issue. There is a huge opportunity to lead by example. This could be a parent or teacher here actually walking the walk and managing their waste as they tell kids they should. This could be a tourist sharing ideas of waste management from their country and encouraging people to pick up trash and recycle plastic. This could be locals and tourists taking it upon themselves to always manage their own trash well and be willing to spend time picking up trash and leaving the places they visit better than they found them. Through further education, leading by example, and the passing of more time I hope that the messages and actions around trash will be better matched.
