Trashcan Environmentalism

Living in a country other than one’s own, some cultural differences stand out more than others.

Lately, these differences have led to me to spend a lot of time thinking about trash. The streets of Lilongwe are fairly clean compared with Kinshasa or Nairobi - or even New York when I was growing up. But every time I’m on a field trip, driving though Malawi’s beautiful savanna countryside, someone in the vehicle rolls down the window to toss a piece of garbage out. Even my gardener leaves a pile of trash in the back corner of the garden despite the presence of a trash bin not 50 feet away.

I grew up in the coming of age of environmentalism in the US, when global warming still had to be proven and Tom Selleck did primetime specials on using fluorescent lightbulbs. My family had blue recycling bins for newspaper, cans and bottles. We insulated our windows in winter to conserve heat and re-used plastic containers. I cut up soda can ties so when the landfill got washed into the ocean, fish wouldn’t get caught in the plastic. I was green.

Now I live in a country where the principles of environmentalism follow different rules. There is no recycling center in a 500-miles radius but the useful life of any object far exceeds that which is expected in America. Shoes are repaired endlessly and anything that’s not already totally dilapidated is reused. In the case of dilapidation, the parts are consumed for integration into the reuse of other things.

And my carbon footprint? Even harder to say. While the average American’s food travels about 2500 miles from source to table, mine doesn’t come from much farther than a few hundred kilometers - but then I’m on enough long haul flights a year to get shunned by GreenPeace for all eternity.

So what now? I’m turning old wine bottles into glasses and vases. We have a lively vegetable garden. But when I go back to the US, I forget the milk carton doesn’t get lumped in with the rest of the trash. For the moment, I’m going to focus on stopping my teammates from rolling down the window of our gas-guzzling Land Cruiser and tossing their trash onto Malawi’s undeveloped grasslands.

The African Gasket

On our way back from the Lake of Stars music festival last weekend, we passed a friend’s broken down pickup by the side of the road. Having already made ample use of jumper cables at the aid of those with less energetic car batteries, we stopped in the name of good karma.

We picked up a local mechanic in a nearby town and brought him back to the truck to take a look. Within a couple of seconds, the mechanic found a leaking gasket and set about the repair by African gasket. A notebook cover was converted to two snug-fitting nuts on either side of the faulty gasket and got the engine running tout de suite.

When the truck’s owner asked if the replaced gasket would carry him 3+ hours back to Lilongwe, the mechanic asked “Today?”

By the time we were loaded back into our car and getting back into the road, our friend’s engine had already died again. We left him in good hands and well on the way to another African gasket.

Getting by in Africa is all about appropriate technology — although the African gasket wasn’t featured in the exhibit I saw over the summer at New York on Design for the Other 90%. I can’t imagine why not.