Trash Ain't Pretty

Visiting a developing country always forces me to think about trash. You see it everywhere -- on the street, in the rivers, outside people's homes. It's all around you, and very difficult to ignore. Living in the U.S., the trash collection system is so organized that it is easy to forget that all the trash you produce has to go somewhere. In Addis, the trash situation is...well, unfortunate. On a couple of occasions, I have seen Addis' version of a garbage truck. It consists of several very strong men pushing and pulling a large cart up and down the streets. The people in the neighborhood pay them to pick up their trash. I'm still not sure where it goes. But can you imagine collecting everyone's trash and using your physical strength to push it around the city?

A couple of weeks ago, I was waiting with a couple of colleagues to go to lunch. We were sitting in a car in the parking lot of the UN, and one of the girls in the car took out a piece of plastic that used to hold pills from her purse. She looked at it and threw it out the window. She appeared to be cleaning the trash from her purse and this was a logical way to dispose of it. This complete disregard for disposing of this item on the ground has stuck in my mind for the past couple of weeks.

Clearly, improving sanitation is a goal in most developing countries, but as with so many things, how do you change people's attitudes toward something as simple as disposal of trash? How do people change from casually tossing their telephone cards on the ground to putting them in their pockets so that they can be disposed of properly? With many issues, I wouldn't assume that making changes to align with my Western experience makes sense or is appropriate. However, I would imagine that most Ethiopians would like to improve the sanitation and cleanliness in their country. But where do you start? Perhaps if the city had a better sanitation infrastructure (i.e. actual garbage trucks), then people would be incentivized to dispose of trash properly? However, generally these services cost money, so how do you provide these services for those that cannot afford to pay?

I'm sure that there are some really smart people that have pondered these questions and come up with some interesting answers. Perhaps I will attempt to explore this, but for now, the presence of trash on the streets of Addis continues to remind me that all the trash I produce must go somewhere, and that there is still much work which needs to be done to improve sanitation in many parts of the world (which of course has important health implications!).