November 7, 2005: Headlines: COS - Panama: Wate Management: Personal Web Site: Panama RPCV Jeremy Terhune writes: Want Not, Waste Not: Waste Management in Peace Corps Panama
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November 7, 2005: Headlines: COS - Panama: Wate Management: Personal Web Site: Panama RPCV Jeremy Terhune writes: Want Not, Waste Not: Waste Management in Peace Corps Panama
Panama RPCV Jeremy Terhune writes: Want Not, Waste Not: Waste Management in Peace Corps Panama
"As PCVs we couldn't generate the annual 9 billion dollars necessary to provide water and sanitation to the worlds developing nations. The popular Recycle! mantra was useless as well, because there was no infrastructure to process our plastic plates into plata. What are we left with? Education."
Panama RPCV Jeremy Terhune writes: Want Not, Waste Not: Waste Management in Peace Corps Panama
Monday, November 07, 2005
Want Not, Waste Not: Waste Management in Peace Corps Panama
According to the Earth Communications Office, the U.S. hosts 5% of the world’s human population while it uses over 30% percent of its resources. As a result of our affluence we have birthed Freshkills landfill, in New York, which is larger than the Great Pyramids combined and visible to the naked eye from outer space. Thus, a unique aspect of campo life is the relationship a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) develops with her/ his trash: there are no men in colorful jumpsuits that arrive on Mondays to make it “disappear” in some landfill behind low-income housing tracts. And when we burn it, we breathe it while the sun sets in an array of pretty colors from the noxious gasses. The point is that we buy into stuff that just won’t go away.
The annexation, I mean separation, of Panamá from Columbia by the United States was not an altruistic act. It was a result of Open Door policy, the forced opening of international markets and tapping of natural resources to appease big business’ insatiable appetite for profit. What does this have to do with waste in the campo? The products that are pushed into foreign markets by American companies are not sustainable. They are waste oriented, or designed for disposability instead of compatibility with the environment. At the local kiosko a PCV can find a bouquet of products offered by Palmolive, Coke, Phillip-Morris (or a subsidy thereof), Gillette, among others; all of which end up in creeks, beaches, schoolyards, and worst of all, our lungs. Does anybody find it ironic that we send volunteers to help clean up the environment while simultaneously flooding Panama and other countries with waste?
Fortunately, the problem seems more complicated than it is. As PCVs we couldn't generate the annual 9 billion dollars necessary to provide water and sanitation to the worlds developing nations. The popular Recycle! mantra was useless as well, because there was no infrastructure to process our plastic plates into plata. What are we left with? Education. Not many campesinos seemed aware of the tremendous power they hold as consumers. If a product isn't bio-logically designed, don’t buy it. Find an alternative or eliminate it from the grocery list. Besides, cutting out the Snickers bars with those obnoxious wrappers will help reduce your waste size.
A wise man once said “There is no calamity like not knowing what is enough.” . If “El Freshkills II” is not going to pop up in Panama in the next few decades, PCVs must provide an important example by choosing the environment over temporary satisfaction. Instead of figuring out ways to deal with trash, drink a few glasses of puréed Noni (a medicinal plant) to cure your Affluenza, and stop buying into it. Or take a piece of advice born from an era when Tuberculosis was called Consumption and flip it around: Want Not, Waste Not.
This article was written by Jeremy Terhune while he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama from 2002-2005.
When this story was posted in November 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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| The Peace Corps Library Peace Corps Online is proud to announce that the Peace Corps Library is now available online. With over 30,000 index entries in 500 categories, this is the largest collection of Peace Corps related stories in the world. From Acting to Zucchini, you can find hundreds of stories about what RPCVs with your same interests or from your Country of Service are doing today. If you have a web site, support the "Peace Corps Library" and link to it today. |
| Friends of the Peace Corps 170,000 strong 170,000 is a very special number for the RPCV community - it's the number of Volunteers who have served in the Peace Corps since 1961. It's also a number that is very special to us because March is the first month since our founding in January, 2001 that our readership has exceeded 170,000. And while we know that not everyone who comes to this site is an RPCV, they are all "Friends of the Peace Corps." Thanks everybody for making PCOL your source of news for the Returned Volunteer community. |
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Story Source: Personal Web Site
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Panama; Wate Management
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