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Am I Blind? A Global Opportunity for Re-Use and Sharing
Guest post by Ian Moise
If you are interested to guest post on our blog, click here to create an account or click here to contact us directly.
—
Am I blind because I do not see?
Image source: ReUseConnection.com
Africa. . . a land of enormous beauty, of warm people, of colorful traditions, of enormous diversity, and of devastating poverty. But with poverty, comes wealth. Africa is a land where everything has value, where someone’s trash is always another person’s resource, where throwing a plastic bottle out the window is recycling, because someone will come along and use that bottle. It is a land of incredible potential. . . and brilliant INNOVATION, IMAGINATION, and CREATIVITY. In Africa, children make toy cars out of plastic bottle tops and soap boxes. School teachers make school bells out of truck tire rims. People make bungee cords by cutting up and slicing bicycle inner tubes. They make cook-stoves out of old metal roofing and even cars. Everything has value.
America (USA). . . a land of enormous beauty, of amazing opportunity, of helpful people, of diverse neighborhoods, of incredible wealth, and of enormous waste. It is a country that, as Annie Leonard states in The Story of Stuff, makes up 5% of the world’s population, consumes 30% of its resources and creates 30% of its waste. It has built an economy on extraction, manufacturing, consumption, and disposal. It is also a land of incredible potential and brilliant INNOVATION, IMAGINATION, and CREATIVITY. It is a land where old clothes are used to make quilts, where magazines are made into trendy purses, and where Olsenhaus has made its 2010 collection of peep-toes (that’s right, women’s dress shoes!!!) from obsolete, analog TV screens.
I grew up in America . . . and I grew up again in Africa. There, I learned a different pace of life, a different appreciation for people, and an admiration for my own country. Most of all, I learned that we are all the same people, separated by our opportunities and experiences. We all care about our children, and we all care about the environment, but we do not all see the same opportunities. The child in America does not see the toy in the soap box. He cannot imagine it. A fashion designer in Africa does not see the shoe in the TV. She cannot imagine it. Are they blind?
The solutions are there. It is just a matter of seeing them.
By Ian Moise
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Ian Moise (ReUseConnection.com)
Ian Moise is founder and CEO of ReUseConnection, a global website promoting the re-use of material goods by allowing people in different countries to share and discuss how they reuse various items. He currently resides in Washington DC but has lived in, traveled to, or worked in over 40 countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. He works with his father, Samuel Moise, a computer programmer who lives in Meadow Vista, California.
You can connect with Ian on Twitter: @ianmoise
You can find ReUseConnection on Facebook
Tags: 3-Rs, Ian Moise, Re-Use, recycle, Recycling, reuse, ReUseConnection
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Inspiring piece.
I can recommend Afrigadget – http://www.afrigadget.com/ – for some lovely stuff being DONE on that great continent
Dave,
Thanks very much for the many valid and great points!!! I agree that there is much waste across Africa, much of it plastic bags, old cars, etc. What I hope to stir with the piece is that creativity and imagination are vehicles for change, but exchange of the two often stops at border crossings. . . And that sharing re-uses between countries is one way to address our global waste problem and move towards a cyclical material stream rather than a linear one. In New Delhi, India, they outlawed plastic bags last year. In Washington DC, there is now a tax on plastic bags. I am happily surprised by how many people you see with reusable bags at the grocery store. I hope our platform will encourage exchange of ideas like those of India and Washington DC.
Great job on the Village Bicycle Project. Keep up the great work.
Cheers,
Ian
I’m a little surprised at the piece, Ian. While yes, there is creative reuse of the refuse, the re-used is but a tiny fraction. The vast vast majority of what gets chucked out the window remains by the side of the road. I wish I had a photo of the road cut I saw once in Ghana, revealing layer upon layer upon layer, of black plastic bags trash. The difference in ‘recycling’ between poor countries and rich ones is ironic, and startling. In Moscow Idaho, until recently, you could recycle small batteries. Not in Ghana. You see them busted open in the road, spilling their toxic guts. Ghana imports container loads of newspaper, to be used as wrapping paper. Cardboard is reused, as backing in furniture, but small pieces are burned. Sawdust from sawmills is a nuisance, it is usually burned to be rid of. In the US, its mixed with glue and made into particle board, or as fuel. Aluminum cans are just litter in Africa, while at home they make a little pocket change for the homeless. In Sierra Leone, the hulking wreckage from the war continues to lay about and rust, as there is no steel re-processing done there.
So in a nutshell, infrastructure is out of whack. The rich countries re-use and recycle because they can afford to, they have the infrastructure in place, and regulations as incentives to reuse and recycle. Poor countries reuse and recycle as creative solutions for hunger and poverty.
I continue to be disappointed at global apathy towards Africa’s environmental problems. Plastic trash fires, a million-time daily occurrence in (probably) every town in Africa, is our problem too.
I cant leave this discussion without a little toot of my own horn. My organization, Village Bicycle Project, takes advantage of the disparities. We collect unwanted bicycles in the rich countries, and send them to Ghana and Sierra Leone, where owning a bicycle is far more prestigious than a fancy car is in the US, and can make a huge difference in terms of mobility and poverty alleviation. We’ve transferred 45,000 bikes to Africa since 1999. I know of two or three other groups who’ve moved as many or more.
Ian, your so right! I think on of the main issues that Americans face can be broken down in one word… SPOILED…. Thus the appreciation for things is not as valuable as it would be to say someone in Africa.
Thanks Ian for the great perspective on the re-use of materials in our world.