COLUMN: Where is the garbage can?
I have been living in a Moroccan host family for two weeks now and life has been going very smoothly. I have quickly adapted to the lack of privacy and personal space and have replaced those needs with a fondness for the tight family and the constant background noise of the television and seven voices. The major obstacles have been surmounted, I can now work the toilet, bidet, and shower. However there is one mystery that I’ve been having more difficulty with- where is the garbage can?
In my house in Guilderland there is at the very least a wastepaper basket in every room. There is a gallon size trash can in every bathroom, a massive trashcan in the kitchen, and two large trash bins in the garage, where the week’s garbage is collected until Tuesday mornings when it is picked up at dawn. Here, however, finding the garbage can is a little more complicated.
There certainly isn’t a trash receptacle in my room, nor is there one in the salon and common spaces. There is no trash can in the bathroom, I’m sure of this. Every time I blow my nose in one of the Kleenex I brought I am hard pressed to find a place to put it. Intensive investigation lead me to find a tiny, bagless basket in the corner of the kitchen that contained some onion peels and egg shells. This is the trash can for the family of 7 who are living in this apartment.
At first I was amazed at how this could possibly be. I rewound in my brain to fourth grade when one of our activities for our unit on the environment was to wear a garbage bag around all day and see how much waste we produce. That was just me, armed with a tall kitchen-sized bag. Now there are 7 people and a garbage basket that might just hold 7 apples.
However, taking a closer look at the lifestyle here, I am one by one able to eliminate the sources of trash. There aren’t paper towels in use, just rags and sponges. The food is bought daily in the market and thus there is no packaging. The thought of how much of my garbage is food wrappers is striking- the plastic from my individually wrapped slices of cheese, the bag from my frozen veggies, the twisty ties, the paper boxes of cereal with plastic bags inside them. All these things seem to be eliminated here. Furthermore, the night’s leftovers aren’t scraped down the garbage disposal but rather fed to the dog or if there is enough, put out on the street for the poor. There is no food waste either.
Closer looks show creative use of would-be garbage. When I buy roasted chick peas at a local vender he creates a little cone out of the old pages of a child’s school work book. While my sense of sanitation is slightly put off by this, my inner environmentalist gives him kudos.
That slogan that was pounded into our heads as young students, ‘Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle’ keeps echoing in my brain. Perhaps in Morocco these words aren’t just a slogan but rather a way of life. It’s no wonder garbage cans aren’t a ubiquitous feature.
In my house in Guilderland there is at the very least a wastepaper basket in every room. There is a gallon size trash can in every bathroom, a massive trashcan in the kitchen, and two large trash bins in the garage, where the week’s garbage is collected until Tuesday mornings when it is picked up at dawn. Here, however, finding the garbage can is a little more complicated.
There certainly isn’t a trash receptacle in my room, nor is there one in the salon and common spaces. There is no trash can in the bathroom, I’m sure of this. Every time I blow my nose in one of the Kleenex I brought I am hard pressed to find a place to put it. Intensive investigation lead me to find a tiny, bagless basket in the corner of the kitchen that contained some onion peels and egg shells. This is the trash can for the family of 7 who are living in this apartment.
At first I was amazed at how this could possibly be. I rewound in my brain to fourth grade when one of our activities for our unit on the environment was to wear a garbage bag around all day and see how much waste we produce. That was just me, armed with a tall kitchen-sized bag. Now there are 7 people and a garbage basket that might just hold 7 apples.
However, taking a closer look at the lifestyle here, I am one by one able to eliminate the sources of trash. There aren’t paper towels in use, just rags and sponges. The food is bought daily in the market and thus there is no packaging. The thought of how much of my garbage is food wrappers is striking- the plastic from my individually wrapped slices of cheese, the bag from my frozen veggies, the twisty ties, the paper boxes of cereal with plastic bags inside them. All these things seem to be eliminated here. Furthermore, the night’s leftovers aren’t scraped down the garbage disposal but rather fed to the dog or if there is enough, put out on the street for the poor. There is no food waste either.
Closer looks show creative use of would-be garbage. When I buy roasted chick peas at a local vender he creates a little cone out of the old pages of a child’s school work book. While my sense of sanitation is slightly put off by this, my inner environmentalist gives him kudos.
That slogan that was pounded into our heads as young students, ‘Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle’ keeps echoing in my brain. Perhaps in Morocco these words aren’t just a slogan but rather a way of life. It’s no wonder garbage cans aren’t a ubiquitous feature.
posted by Laura | 4:09 PM
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