Many, many ways in which Venezuela could invest in itself
www.vheadline.com Posted: Monday, February 24, 2003 By: Dawn Gable
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 04:52:16 +0000 From: Dawn Gable morning_ucsc@hotmail.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: recycling
Dear Editor: I just read Jorge Marin's letter at VHeadline. I am an environmentalist and biologist by profession and I spent a couple years in Venezuela where I too was appalled by the litter and disregard for it. I had ecology students who would litter right in front of me, because they didn't get the connection.
It seemed so curious to me, but then I started understanding some things about their culture and their reality that made it make a little sense.
First, they are still a relatively sparsely-populated country in most areas. Therefore there are still plenty of places to "dump" your garbage where it will never be seen. Second, the climate and weather tends to break materials down quicker in the tropics.
- But most importantly Venezuelans (and many other countries) do twp things better than recycling ... they reuse all their soda and beer bottles and they use less resources to begin with (notice the lack of toilet paper everywhere, ever see shrink wrapped tomatoes there?).
Besides, for many of them, they are actually being rather realistic. Instead of having the "not in my back yard" syndrome or the "out of sight out of mind" attitude, and shipping their waste to some giant landfill or to poorer countries etc., they just live with the consequences of their consumption facing them everyday.
There are many, many things that Venezuela lacks ... many, many ways in which Venezuela could invest in itself to create jobs and raise living standards.
- Recycling is still very far down on the list and it is, in the end, missing the point ... which is to reduce and reuse which they seem to be doing and which the USA has completely abandoned doing ... maybe we should be taking a lesson from them.
None of these revelations however, make it any easier to see someone chuck a used plastic cup out the window of a bus.
Dawn Gable morning_ucsc@hotmail.com