happy easter
It was a sunny 75°F here today, and I spent the afternoon transforming some discarded plastic food crates into planters. I lined 'em with cardboard (also discarded); we'll see how they hold up with multiple waterings. It's certainly far cheaper than buying planters, and they would've been thrown out anyway, so I figure it's a worthy experiment
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Clearly I need to find out more!
Garbage disposal. Well. It's probably fire pits here, too, unless there are actual landfills, though I'd be surprised. What I know from what I've seeen is that Arab and Bangladeshi men wearing blue uniforms and safety-orange or -green vests come by every day and collect the rubbish people put outside their gates. Everything goes: tree branches, bags of toilet paper from the WC, food waste, plastic bottles (so. many. plastic bottles), and from outside the shops, crates and cardboard boxes. There are garbage trucks, but this is Suli; I think out in the villages they just have burn pits.
Understandably, folks have been preoccupied with rather more pressing matters for the last 50 years or so, and therefore missed the whole burgeoning Environmental Movement that happened in less war-torn countries (Germany, for example, or even the US). As a result, though, there's such a throw-it-away mentality here that you literally cannot go anywhere outside the city, anywhere lovely, without seeing trash everywhere. Organizations like Nature Iraq are working to change that, and there are plans in the works for at least a few recycling plants within larger Iraq, among other things.
(explaining more than you asked for, in case anyone else reads and is interested...)
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