Trash

One of the craziest adjustments since I arrived in Panama is the handling of trash. There is no trash pickup in areas outside of the larger cities, save for a lucky few. This means that people must resort to burning it or tossing it in the river.

At first you may judge this activity but stop to think, when is the last time you gave any mind to throwing away a piece of trash? You simply put it in a bag, leave the bag on the street on Monday night, and by Tuesday morning it has magically disappeared.

This change of situation has had me feeling a sense of ownership over each piece of trash I create. Every plastic bottle of soda I purchase, I am very clearly responsible for. The pollutants that enter the air are my doing. It's so much easier to put a piece of trash away and forget about it when someone comes to pick it up. However, it doesn't just disappear. It'll sit in a dump for hundreds or thousands of years with rain acting as a means of transport to carry the pollutants into the rivers and eventually back into our drinking water. Next time you're in the store, give a thought to where that plastic bottle is going to end up.