A large family was settled in tables and chairs to our front and side, while a smaller family had taken over the tables directly in front us. I noticed the family to one side ranging in ages from small children to grandmothers had finished their lunch. You could tell because they had dropped everything made of plastic onto the ground. Cups, plates, napkins and other detritus littered the ground around them. The group in front of us did the same, allowing their napkins to blow gently across the cement and into the tots pool, while leaving the larger pieces of rubbish strewn about, despite the fact that there was a bin directly behind them no more than arms reach away.
They are not schooled in the art of rubbish disposal. No wonder though that Indonesia has a serious litter problem. Children from a young age are shown that it’s okay to leave it to someone else. There is little in the Indonesian consciousness of littering, it just doesn’t make any impact on their sense of right and wrong. Everywhere you go in the city, rubbish litters the roads, the rivers, the pavements and so on.
So how is it that environmental responsibility of ones own and communities actions are all but ignored? It’s not a labour issue; there are plenty of people out of work. It could be a financial issue in that there might not be any funds to pay the people to keep everything orderly. It could also be that environmental awareness is just unimportant in day to day survival. However, be that as it may, this does not excuse the rampant disregard for the environment. Rivers are choked by rubbish, the city is weighed down with it, the streets piled with it, and few people realise the strain they are placing on their habitat.
It comes down to just one thing.
Education.
Educate the children as they go to school, run grass root campaigns to raise awareness of what is happening in their part of the world. Provide the simple utilities to help contain, recycle and compost rubbish. Show people what they can do and why. Develop a literacy of littering, that is, a knowledge base and competency in action and consequences. Consequences both in results and in action.Results could be highlighted by focussing on the economic, social and environmental benefits from a clean and healthy environment. Sustainable development which incorporates these three aspects has at its base the notion that by thinking of the issues before an action takes place, the action is thus mediated towards a more responsible effect. Using the framework of BDA (Before, During, After), the group or individual undertakes a quick three step of what they need to do before they take an action, what they do during it, and what they would do after it. While simple, it does take some thought.
A community could set up a committee whose main task is to analyse each and every decision that may affect the community. That is, an analysis of the best outcomes based on the 3 aspects of sustainable development for any activities undertaken in the community.
A wedding is to be held. An analysis of the social, economic and environmental impact both positive and negative acts as a catalyst for further discussion and hopefully, better informed decisions. How would the community benefit from the wedding and what are the best options available to ensure that the pros far outweigh the cons.? If organisers were instructed in what could and could not be done in order to make the smallest environmental impact, the community benefits.
Another example is the food sellers in a community. Take the regular nasi goreng vendor who wraps the fried rice in waxed paper. Educate him/her to stop using wax paper and instead use banana leaves (as earlier generations used to). Or provide him/her with plates to use. Provide communal sinks and running water for washing. Grey water is then distributed or recycled. Provide a recycling bin. Make it a condition of operating that all food waste is composted in a central area.
The community committee could organise for an NGO to participate in an educational drive throughout the area. By highlighting the issues that impact on that area from a social, economic and environmental viewpoint gives both autonomy and empowerment. Once armed with information and strategies, the communities can take on responsibility for their own area.
Consequences need to be addressed as well. What if a member of the community acts in an irresponsible manner? The community as a whole decides on what sanctions should be put in place. Community service, a fine, a restriction, attendance at a local course in environmental responsibility could all act to provide barriers to wrongdoing. With guidelines and community education in place, the community is provided with the means to act as a cohesive whole.
This obviously is taken a further step in the greater community. The citizens of a city are educated through mass campaigns such as TV advertisements on littering and sustainable development. Fines and restrictions are put in place and enforced. People are made aware of the consequences of their actions both from an individual and a global perspective.
At an individual level, again a BDA analysis is required. Once used, each time becomes simpler, a tacked on thought process that allows responsible actions to take place. The use of water and electricity, rubbish disposal etc. all incorporates a decision making process that uses at its foundation what could be done to minimise impact. It is not the big things make a difference, it’s the small stuff.
And it could all start with that one family instead of sitting amongst the rubbish they had strewn about their table, to reach behind them and dump it all in a bin, showing their children the right thing to do.
One small step on the pathway to a literacy of littering.
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An Australian, Dominic resides in Surabaya with his Irish Muse, 2 gorgeous children, a cat and lots of fish.
His blog is here.
3 comments:
You are definitely correct in your analysis on littering cultures of indonesians. i really wish that the everybody can do something about it.
It's funny, I have just come back from my native NZ and was amazed to (re)discover the impact that a simple "put it in the bin" campaign can have. I remember the "tidy kiwi" campaign the Govt ran when I was a kid. It was probably a rip off of a "tidy Aussie" campaign, which in turn was borrowed from somewhere else. But it worked.
It may be easy to discount NZ as an unfair comparison: keeping a country clean when you only have 4.2 million residents should be relatively easy. But it's not that simple: keeping a country clean when you have NO-ONE TO CLEAN UP AFTER YOU is not an easy task.
We would see amazing results if such a campaign were combined with an annual "Clean Up Indonesia Day", similar to the Australian one.
There is hope. My (Javanese) partner who accompanied me marvelled at the quality of the roads and was equally stunned at the price of petrol (nearly two bucks!!). It's simple: the tax on petrol helps pay for the roads, but he didn't agree that the result (no potholes) justified the means (expensive petrol). We weren't back in Jakarta for more than a day when he changed his tune.
The trick will be getting people like my partner and the millions of Indonesians who want change to take it to the next level. That's the hard bit.
Keep Britain Tidy has been a campaign for as long as I can remember ~ which is quite a long time.
Indonesian grandparents had their food wrapped in banana leaves before the advent of plastic and greased paper. Disposing of banana leaves was easy - throw it virtually anywhere because it would decompose quickly.
Current generations of Indonesians can't yet distinguish between organic and non-organic packaging yet.
It is very much a matter of education, whether through the formal carrot or stick approach or by example.
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