These are canals in the Port-au-Prince area. I know in much of Haiti the canals serve the dual purpose of supplying water for bathing/washing clothes and to allow water and wastewater (ew) to flow to lower ground; I'm not sure anybody uses these canals for bathing/washing though. Only the richest parts of Haiti can afford door to door trash removal services like we have most places in the USA.
Haiti serves as a great example of the problems with single use drinking containers and other disposable plastic items - once you've got 'em, they just accumulate. As some folks say about the concept of throwing things "away" - "there's no such place as away". However, Haitians do know how to get plastic junk out of their immediate surroundings - by burning it. Sorry, don't have any pictures of that. But it's pretty common to see a pile of trash burning, possibly giving off dioxins.
Countries like Haiti, where money is scarce and almost everything is inexpensive, I think there's a huge potential to change the way we deal with environmental issues in a way that's really positive... without needing to spend a lot of money. What do we do with situations like these?
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It occurs to me that most of the trash in Haiti is imported from "devoloped" nations. First, they don't tend to throw away anything that might still be useful, and folks make a living scavenging for anything of value - scrap metal, wood, etc. Then, the pigs, goats and dogs eat anything organic. What's left is a river of styrofoam and plastic bottles, most of which comes from "aid" and cheap imports - bottled water and whatnot.
What do you think?
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