Angela Formia

A friend of mine laughed at me today because I had my lunch in a flimsy little bag that was originally the wrapper for the plastic recycling bags used here in Cardiff. She said that was the ultimate in recycling. Actually though, I think my sister is the ultimate recycler. When we were kids I remember her having an argument with my parents because she somewhat illogically refused to leave a banana peel in a field where we were having a picnic, and held onto it all the way during the subsequent long, hot car journey home. In many of the African countries I visited during my fieldwork there was little evidence of waste disposal systems, no rubbish trucks zooming around in the morning to collect tidy black bags for the landfill or incinerator, and certainly no sign of recycling schemes. Sometimes there were Everest-sized mountains of garbage, often smack in the middle of cities, smelly and smouldering under the tropical sun, dotted with scavenging humans and animals, and maybe even a certain sea turtle researcher looking for discarded carapaces (and dodging rats the size of dogs!). Once, I was on a remote, unspoiled beach in Equatorial Guinea with a local field assistant- even the currents hadn’t accumulated any debris on the spotlessly white sand - and I was happily admiring the scenery. We ate bread and sardines while waiting for the boat to pick us up after a night of patrolling, but when my assistant dumped the sardine can under a palm tree the idyllic scene unravelled... I started babbling about how we shouldn’t spoil this beautiful spot, that we should bring home the tin and dispose of it in the city, why leave traces of civilization everywhere humans go? He argued back that it was perfectly fine there, where nobody would see it (other than the next batch of sea turtle researchers probably…) and that it was not good to bring it back to the city where there were so many people, and already too much garbage piling higher every day… plus, all his fellow citizens would probably agree with him… and I was utterly crazy (he implied)! That left me speechless… is a thin evenly spread layer better than a few big piles? In a city with no electricity or running water, waste disposal is not really a priority, and environmental awareness pretty low on the government agenda, the possibility of contaminating natural resources ignored even by my enlightened turtle assistant. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure I wanted (or could) change his mind. He has to live with an Everest of rubbish outside his front door and a city full of litter-bugs. I’m lucky; once I put out my rubbish or recycling on Tuesday nights in Cardiff, I never have to see it again, smell it, worry about it contaminating my drinking water or breeding vermin and disease, or even have to climb around it looking for carapaces… Anyway, I snuck the oily sardine tin in my bag… stinking it up for weeks thereafter!