Recycling

Anyone who knows me vaguely well, especially Clari as she lived with me last 9 months, will know I have a thing about recycling… everything possible must be recycled or composted and packaging is evil.

So what happens when I come to Cambodge and I can’t recycle, I have to drink bottled water (litres of the stuff) and the place where I’ve been getting fruit and veg wraps everything up in cellophane and polystyrene big time?

Well… obviously I could buy water in huge containers and get someone to bring it into my room, but the rooms are serviced and free bottled water seems part of the service, and its not in big bottles… and I can get unpackaged fruit from other places… but still I cant recycle anything like paper etc.

I suppose I could just ignore my niggling conscience… but unfortunately last week we were running an assessment workshop… working with programme managers to put together assessment reports for new projects starting up… a couple of the projects are based in PP, working with communities and children who live and work on rubbish dumps… oh dear conscience can not be ignored… I am sure most people can get the picture, and I can’t claim to have seen these rubbish dumps myself, but anyway… poverty means that children are out of school working on rubbish dumps collecting cans, plastic bottles and plastic bags (they are also evil). They get paid by the kg, and collect about 50kg per day, along with crappy skin diseases, respiratory infections, diarrhea, etc etc. There isn’t a NHS in Cambodia, that’s for sure… I suppose I could look at it like putting out the rubbish gives the children something to collect and so gives them an income… but I’m not convinced… what makes this story even better is that many of these people live on raised houses above canals which carry run off polluted waste water from the garment factories… but that’s another rant…

On the more cheery side the sun is shining, the weather is gorgeous… the food is better than amazing, Monday is a public holiday, I’m going swimming in a bit and then I’m going to buy a blender and make myself some fresh fruit smoothies mmmmmmmm

Has anyone seen the Ethan Hawk movie ‘Before Sunset’? I think I watched it on a plane ages ago, but I saw it again last week and I really like it… it’s just a long conversation really…