[whataretheysaying] Mary Madigan: A different mental planet

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Posted by Mary Madigan:
A different mental planet
http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1175194972.shtml


   [1]Wretchard at the Belmont Club describes three recent disasters -

   1. In [2]2000 a literal mountain of garbage collapsed on scavengers at
   a dump site near the Philippine legislative building burying about 300
   people.

   2. [3]In Gaza, an overloaded septic system in Northern Gaza burst,
   unleashing a âtsunamiâ which overwhelmed the Bedouin farming village
   of Umm al-Nasr.

   3. Last year in Lagos fuel thieves punctured a gasoline pipeline,
   causing residents to scramble to grab buckets of gushing fuel.
   Inevitably some cigarette or metal-on-metal spark caused a disaster,
   and the resulting explosion [4]killed at least 260 people.

   He says:

     ...These three incidents illustrate what environmentalists in the
     West often forget: that the Third World operates on an entirely
     different mental planet. Many years ago I actually lived for some
     months in and around a dump site far worse than the one which
     collapsed. It was known as Smokey Mountain; and the infernal fires
     which arose from it night and day were caused by the spontaneous
     combustion of organic material underfoot. If anything resembled a
     terrestrial version of hell, it was Smokey Mountain at night with
     garbage trucks snaking up the hill amidst pillars of fire and
     smoke, attended by what seemed innumerable legions of imps. The
     site was featured in many documentaries which purported to show the
     horror of life in the Third World, but I can tell you, from first
     hand experience, that the denizens of Smokey Mountain considered
     themselves to be comparatively lucky. They had a guaranteed income.

     Each square meter of Smokey Mountain was divided into territories.
     Whatever was dumped into those territories could be ripped out and
     sold -- copper wire, glass bottles, waste paper, metal -- and
     carved into the sides of this garbage mountain were processing
     sites where the glass was smashed and binned into baskets, tin cans
     were flattened and formed into bales, and copper wire was extracted
     from the interiors of motors or cables. Paper, especially
     long-fiber white paper, was sold by the kilo. One sharp practice,
     favored by the scavengers, was to dampen the paper in water before
     having it weighed, a process called "bomba"...

     ...A tremendous amount of recycling was achieved in this way. What
     you have to understand is that the garbage which finally settled to
     the bottom of Smokey Mountain had been stripped of its last usable
     material. It was picked clean. Most of Manila's cardboard, a
     considerable percentage of its glass bottles and quite a bit of its
     scrap metal came from the labor of thousands of scavengers. From a
     certain point of view it was the epitome of "appropriate
     technology". It was almost fantastically "Green". And come to think
     of it, it was mostly honest labor...

   [5]Read it all - and the comments.

References

   1. http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/03/sewage-tsunami.html
   2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/830809.stm
   3. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21461245-2,00.html
   4. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/world/africa/27nigeria.html?ex=1324875600&en=b726edf7585dbbd8&ei=5088&partner=rssn
   5. http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/03/sewage-tsunami.html