Rubbish!!

And, there’s loads of rubbish.

Anyone who’s been to Asia or Africa will have seen what I’m talking about – plastic bags, plastic bottles, cigarette butts, styrofoam, wrappers, wrappers and more wrappers. I’ve seen the same problem in Cambodia and Thailand, where they struggle to provide rubbish collection services. Also in Uganda. And even when I was riding a horse through the spectacularly stunning Sinai desert along the Red Sea, I had to dodge thousands of plastic bags, bits of rubber, and plastic bottles that the gale force desert winds blew everywhere.

And, until just the other day, Gili Meno was the same.

The abundance of trash is one of the first things that people who come here ask us about. “What on earth is wrong with these people???!!!” they – we – say.

I’ve learnt that Indonesian people literally drop their rubbish wherever they are standing at the time they open a packet, or finish a drink. Even if they are standing on ground that is fastidiously raked of leaves, and hosed twice daily to keep the dust down; ironically, they will carelessly – actually no, it is rather nonchalantly – toss their rubbish without any qualms whatsoever. It’ll be raked up later.

Unfortunately, that habit also applies as they walk or ride along the streets, meaning the edges of all roads and pathways are littered.

It’s only natural to be shocked when you see this. And it seems natural to exclaim in horror that these people are careless and irresponsible. I mean really, what sort of ignoramuses are they?!

Coming from our country where rubbish is collected each week and taken out of sight, out of mind. Where, if you’re around my age you grew up bombarded by ‘Keep Australia Beautiful’ signs and TV ads, you know all about the ‘Bin Your Butts’ campaign and the annual Clean Up Australia days. I imagine it’s the same story in other ‘developed’ nations. We were educated about environmental pollution and the danger rubbish poses to our wildlife, particularly marine life. Our kids are taught the Three R’s to reduce, reuse, recycle. And we, or our landlords, can afford to pay taxes and rates to have our rubbish collected and disposed of in more environmentally friendly and efficient processes.

Here in Indonesia, there is no such luxury, nor progressiveness.

This is a tropical country and people live their lives almost completely outside, making use of the abundance of supplies available from nature. Not that long ago, and sometimes still now, banana leaves were used to wrap meals and cakes. Foods were eaten on bamboo plates or banana leaves, or eaten together with the large cracker (kerupuk) ‘plates’ they were served on. Food was grilled outside over coconut husks. Utensils and wrappings were natural and therefore readily biodegradable. A whole family guzzled water from one jug – without touching it with their mouths – so there was no need for daily individual water bottles.

On the mainland these natural materials were tossed into gullies, rice paddy irrigation streams, or rivers, to be taken far away with the water flows. On flat, dry Gili Meno they were buried or burnt.

Centuries of just tossing materials away. A swing of the arm. This behaviour is ingrained into their way of life, their culture. And has been passed down through the generations.

Relatively speaking it is not that long ago that plastic was invented and introduced into these communities, as it was into ours. Now, here, items of all kinds come in single-serve packets. Washing powder, porridge, coffee, shampoo, chips… the list is endless. At first I thought, how bloody ridiculous! Even a packet of crackers will have sets of 3 small crackers each wrapped in individual plastic wrappers within it.

But living amongst these locals, I soon realised it is because many people live day to day on extremely meagre incomes (and believe me, their cost of living isn’t always relative to their income). For many, buying a sachet of shampoo is a treat and they simply can’t afford to buy a bottle. Many people don’t have fridges, and disposable foods are bought daily.

It is easy for westerners to feel superior, or more ‘advanced’. But we also have a very long way to go to decrease the amount of plastic we produce and use. Next time you walk down the big bright glossy supermarket aisle or look in a kid’s school lunchbox take a moment to notice how much plastic there is! Is it really all necessary?? I think convenience takes precedence to environmental considerations a lot of the time in our ‘developed’ countries. And do we all abide by the separation requirements for the different wheelie bins? Each week my sister’s partner, bless him, goes through the bins at their block of apartments and removes plastic bags from the yellow recycling bins and household rubbish from the green bins. Mind you he huffs and puffs and swears at the perpetrators while he does this good deed 😉.

Relatively speaking the western world has progressed to care more for the environment, but it’s not that long ago that we were just as irresponsible and shocking. I’m sure there’s endless examples. Did you know that in the 1967 (that’s in my lifetime) old car wrecks were dumped onto the beach at Surfers Paradise, to help prevent erosion? And I remember just 18 years ago, I’m pretty sure I was the only parent in my kids’ primary school that prepared fresh foods and put it into plastic containers in their lunchboxes. The rubbish at the school at lunch times was astonishing. I remember too that the dead-end country street we lived on at the time was regularly littered with beer bottles and McDonald’s wrappers. And have you ever seen the aftermath of a music festival or sports match? And, relatively speaking, our u-beaut colourful bins and large-scale recycling efforts are pretty new.

We don’t need to feel superior. Of course developing countries are still behind us. The governments are struggling to provide food, health and educational services and support for their milions of people, let alone a sophisticated and expensive rubbish collection service. How do you educate hundreds of millions of mostly very poor people? How do you convince someone who is struggling hard just to feed their family basic rice meals about the importance of marine-life? Nothing is simple. How can we as westerners – “first worlders” – swear and curse when the problem is complex.

Sometimes it’s ok to be dumbfounded and swear. Recently I was told by a couple of travellers who went on a large Asian long-haul ferry that they witnessed hundreds of passengers throwing rubbish overboard. Some parents even praised their children for not dropping trash onto the deck. There was an enormous trail of rubbish floating in the boat’s wake. Unbelievable isn’t it?! Those people aren’t living in the slums. Surely they have access to more information.

At the beach here I marvel at the white sand and the most exquisite crystal-clear azure water, and I try not to frown at the water bottles lying at the high tide mark that mar the beautiful space, and those passing by on the ocean currents (particularly in rainy season when they are washed down from the rivers on Bali, Java and Lombok). The world’s oceans are full of rubbish, and there’s even whole islands made up of floating rubbish. Who is responsible? Who will fix the problem?

I heard there was a survey held in Bali a couple of years ago about litter. The average answer, from people of all ages, to a question about how long a plastic bottle takes to decompose in the environment was apparently “3-4 days”. They really had no idea. I’m not sure what their understanding is of how long it takes for a cigarette butt to decompose…. (and crikey, there must be many millions of cigarettes smoked, daily, in Indonesia!)

Thankfully things have started changing here on the island. Even in the last 18 months since I first came here it has improved a lot. Many locals have started cleaning up the public areas around their homes. At the start of the year the island ‘government’, encouraged by a small contingent of vocal expat business owners who have been lobbying here for years, finally introduced rubbish bins. For a fee you can have your rubbish collected by horse and cart and it is taken to a central island incinerator. So now the daily family toxic burn-offs have decreased a lot (yay!) and instead the tip in the middle of the island burns 24/7. At first the incinerator plume took the smoke high and away, but soon in true Indonesian fashion the incinerator collapsed and then the entire rubbish tip area smoked willy-nilly (luckily, months later, they have now built a new stack). Now there is an organized effort to send plastic water bottles, soft drink cans and cardboard boxes by boat to Lombok for recycling.

But many of the locals can’t afford the rubbish collection fee. And still, a lot of the rubbish on the street stayed, and people continued to litter in public.

A western owned eco-hostel here on the island tried to be pro-active, and in doing so also felt they were contributing to the community. The hostel used to hold Trash Hero collection days. This initiative is successful and popular in many countries and involves inviting tourists to gather for a weekly walk around the area, in our case the beach, collecting all the rubbish along the way and finding inspirational ways to recycle the stuff collected. In return the volunteer tourists had a social time and got a free beer at the end. Unfortunately, the locals on Gili Meno are staunchly (and probably sometimes bloody stupidly) proud, and don’t take kindly to westerners coming in and telling them what to do, nor trying to do things they consider good for the island. Good intentions were wasted. The locals were very resistant to the efforts and the Trash Hero walks were stopped 🙁.

I need to be here longer to understand and in the meantime I try to respect and not judge or criticise. In Bali there are more efforts underway to educate people and encourage them to change ingrained habits. Two amazing young Indonesian girls at the famous Green School are trying to rid the entire Bali island of plastic bags. A monumental goal. They have the support of the Indonesian president and are making some progress. I recently heard that the Balinese government has introduced hefty fines for littering. Due to its massive tourism trade – not all of whom are Aussie ‘bogans’ looking to shop, surf or party in Kuta – a lot of the incredibly beautiful and sacred island of Bali is becoming greener and more eco-conscious. And it’s starting to spread to Lombok. Green-books is an initiative started in Java – it raises funds to put environmental education books into primary school libraries across the Indonesian archipelago. New inventions, like the massive river ‘vacuum-cleaner’, have been placed in rivers, including the main river in Lombok. I do hope that the education processes are ramped up and continue, for the sake of not just this little island paradise, but the entire planet.

Back to Meno. Lately a couple of the locally owned accommodation places have held mini trash collection walks around the island with their staff. This has been really encouraging to see, but I felt it was a bit half-hearted and hit and miss. But perhaps it was the seed…..

Because the weekend before last the best and most amazing thing ever happened… I returned from my short visa ‘run’ to Australia to find large professionally-made signs pinned to trees all around the island. One was strategically placed near our corner warung, one of the messiest trashiest spots on the whole island. It said something like this: “Shame On Our Own Trash”, and “Gili Meno Clean Up & Go Green”. I was stunned!

A local man who owns a popular Meno cafe had instigated the signs, with sponsorship from regional government and industry, and that weekend he’d organised a massive Gili Meno Clean Up. It was a mini festival. He invited bands from Lombok to play Sasak music, held lucky “door” prizes, gave everyone a t-shirt saying “I ❤ Gili Meno” and organised a trash hunt for both the Saturday and the Sunday. I was gobsmacked. I didn’t join in as I was helping with the Cat Clinic, but when I saw almost every single person that I know on this island walking past with the 200-300 islanders picking up rubbish – by the way the population is only about 400 – my jaw hit the ground. And then I couldn’t stop smiling.

There is hope yet. Locals leading the way – surely that’s the best solution. The hunts are planned to continue each weekend, alternating mornings and afternoons so that everyone can get the chance to join in. Last week through my friend Jane I met a lovely young lady from Lombok who works on Gili Meno. She was passionate about her country and told us about young people’s groups and other initiatives for Indonesian people to improve their country, socially, educationally and environmentally. Hope!

Disappointingly, yesterday I followed a young chap home along the beach from the harbour and saw him toss his plastic bottle. It reminded me of a tour guide who’d done the same in front of me at a temple in Bali last year. Just the old swing of an arm 🙁. I groaned and made a quiet negative comment, but was reluctant to do more. As a newcomer and a foreigner who wants to live in peace on this beautiful island I can’t afford to put anyone offside. It’s a tough one. It’s a slow process. But I do hope that soon actions like his become an exception and that these many other wonderful initiatives are sustained!!