Trash Day

Tears fall from my stinging eyes as I run past a tree. Bright amber flames are licking up in the air as toxic fumes fill my lungs. My fellow volunteers cough and gasp as we try to escape the smoke but it is no use. As soon as we escape we run into yet another burning pile.

It is Trash day in Los Mortales.

In the United States, we buy processed and packaged goods all of the time. When we are finished we throw it in the trash. Then once a week we drag our bins out and a nice big clean truck, more or less, comes and hauls our trash away. Our hands and homes are clean.

In most parts of Panama, and the majority of underdeveloped countries, people that are lucky enough to be able to afford packaged good use those goods...But no big clean truck comes up to pick it up once a week. Their plastics, and rappers, and alumunium, and batteries, and human waste, and scraps of food sit.. on the sides of roads or in back yards. Until trash day. On trash day; men, women, and sometimes children put all said objects in a pile and set fire to it. Those fumes and smoke bellow into the air. That air is filled with fumes and toxins that they then breath. Those same toxins settle onto their crops or on grass that their animals eat, and then which are consumed. Those same toxins settle into the water that people bath and drink out of.

Westerners have the privilege of shipping off their dirty trash to places like Africa or the middle east were they sit consumed in flames. Other times our trash is put in safe, clean landfills. So it is very easy for those same westerners to come and view the "trash days" in Panama as backwards. It is quite the opposite if we look at the history of waste here.

In the past, all of the trash in country was organic. You ate watermelon or chicken or made a cake and you could put the waste in the back yard or on the side of the rode. That waste would break down quickly and provide nutrients to the earth. Glass bottles and jars were always reused and repurposed. Folks of lower economic means back home in Philly understand this ritual very well. Our Ragu jars, and Country Crook jars were always used to hold bacon fat or left over food. However as plastics and other inorganic materials were introduced to society they would not break down. As people in the Campo were able to get more money they wanted to spend it on packaged items. These items show that you are no longer strugling that you can afford to go into the city and buy goods that used to be reserved for the middle class or rich. The only problem is that unlike those other groups of people the packaged goods were stuck. The burning of trash is a large public health issue as it increase cancer risk, asthma, and leads to other health problems. It also lowers the quality of life in these beautiful towns but the people living under these conditions don't know what to do. Thats where organizations like the Peace Corps come in!

I am part of the environmental sector. It is my job to help develop better waste management solutions with the people in my town. Already I am talking to people about the dangers of trash burning. I learned during training that we can use plastic bottles and stuff trash in those bottles. We can then bury those bottles and it protects the toxins from entering into the ground water. I am lucky in that my site does have a "trash man" of sorts. He comes once a month. Many times with only one day notice and carts away trash for 3 dollars. It is an underused service however because of the lack of information. It is my goal to streamline that process and implement a recycling program. I think that with the help of the beautiful people of Portobelillo that we can do it.