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| A bunch of swiss chard tied with organic wrapping |
I found that I produced far less non-organic trash while I was in Guatemala. This was mainly thanks to the food. There were no supermarkets or even real markets in my town. What there was was an open air farmers market twice a week (and for the first year I was there it was only once a week). At this market it was all individuals selling produce so there were no shrink-wrapped vegetables on styrofoam trays. I didn't even encounter rubber bands (probably because this would be an extra and unnecessary cost). What there was a lot of was bundles of vegetables tied with leaves or other natural materials.
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| Even the chicken came unpackaged |
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| This bundle of chipilin was tied with the leaf |
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| There was no buying a sack of potatoes - just tell the guy how many pounds you want |
I also wrote a post about how I "handled" the trash I did produce - mainly by feeding the organic trash to the pigs.
I know that I wrote about this before, but it makes me so angry. I literally have a severe visceral reaction to seeing people of all ages throw their trash on the ground or out the window of a camioneta without even thinking about it. And I am not talking about organic trash like a banana peel that will decompose. Noooooooo I'm talking plastic, Styrofoam, everything. To be fair the real problem (besides a lack of environmental education) is a bad trash collection system. There is one trash can in my entire town. Even in Xela, the second largest city in Guatemala, it was hard to find a trashcan. So rather than carry trash around all day and then most likely burn it when they got home, a lot of people chose to throw their trash on the ground or out the window of the bus.
