Nature and stuff is probs good

Before going to Morocco last summer, I knew nothing about environmental issues outside of the United States and a few other large countries like Russia and China. Although I never really thought about it, I’m sure if you had asked me what I expected in North Africa I would have guessed that it was much cleaner than the western world. Seriously I feel like everyday I read another article about how terrible US policies are for the environment, how we never signed Kyoto, how the Clean Air Act is actually an example of doublespeak. And lets be real, I go to the University of Chicago; the vast majority of my friends are liberals who loves trees (full disclosure: I may fall into both of those categories as well).

Indeed, I’m sure the overall impact a country like Morocco or Tunisia has on global pollution is tiny compared to the US. Despite the problems I’m about to describe, the amount of industrialization in the United States makes these countries look like a joke. Plus US companies go around the world and destroy incredible natural habitats everywhere, so thats another delightful gift we give to the world.

All that said, just walking around Tunis its obvious that environmentalism isn’t really a thing here. Tunisia isn’t some sort of third world country-- there are cars, computers, internet, and Nutella (which I’m pretty sure is the true mark of civilization). Yet although Tunisia has many of the conveniences of modern life, it doesn’t really have the infrastructure to handle disposing of them.

One of the few chores* that is easier here is taking out the trash. First of all, there are no recycling facilities, so there is absolutely no point in trying to sort out bottles/other recyclables. This is really unfortunate because most people don’t drink the tap water here, so they use TONS of plastic bottles. Second, there is no central trash collection place to put everything. “Taking out the trash” means gathering the garbage in my apartment into plastic bags and then dumping those bags on the street. Late at night trash collector/street cleaners come by and pick up at least some of the garbage.

Unsurprisingly given this system, Tunis is a fairly dirty city. The streets are littered with everything from coke bottles to plastic wrappers. None of this helped by the fact that there are basically no garbage cans, so if you want to throw something away while walking around you basically have no choice but to toss it somewhere random.

I’m not entirely convinced it even matters where you put your trash anyway. One of the first nights I was here, me and my roommate decided to walk downtown. On our way past a certain empty lot, we smelled one of the worst smells I have ever encountered**. Unlike the usual gross smells you find in Tunis (normally something decaying, another byproduct of not having a garbage disposal system), this was clearly some sort of burning chemical. I figured out later that the empty building lot was actually a sort of landfill, and we were smelling burning garbage.  I have since become very familiar with this lovely scent, as I have walked past several burning trash piles throughout the city. This problem is even worse in the countryside, where there are no other garbage disposal options.

The other major pollution problem in Tunis is the traffic. I don’t think I really understood the importance of emission standards until visiting North Africa. Unfortunately, they simply don’t exist here. I don’t know how many times I’ve been walking down a street and some motorcycle will blow pass me spraying out piles of black smoke. My morning walk to work is down a crowded street during rush hour, and it often feels like the air I am breathing came directly out the back end of an exhaust pipe. Last summer I had a friend who actually had lung problems because of the air quality in Tangier.

Again, I’m sure Tunisia is nothing compared to the United States in terms of overall pollution problems. I’m not writing this post to brag about how clean America is, or to criticize people here.  Mostly I think its interesting to see the consequences of being a developing country a hundred or so years after the industrial revolution. When the United States was polluting up a storm, we simply didn’t have many of the technologies we do today. As we developed more stuff, we also developed more ways to deal with the problems it created***. Tunisia didn’t have to develop any of the stuff-- the technologies it needed were already around by the time people here could afford them. As a result, while Tunisia has most of the things that we take for granted, it doesn’t really have a system for dealing with their negative side effects. Based on what I’ve heard from friends/read, the same is true for much of the developing world. My roommate’s boyfriend was just in Nepal, where he says it was even worse. Apparently there was a river that was so polluted that just walking across it made him want to vomit.

Anyway, thats all I have for this week. Next week I think I’m going to talk about food, so if you are still reading this blog Adria, get excited.


*Example of a chore that is harder: washing my clothes. We don’t have a washing machine, so I get to do this by hand. Lets just say in the daily battle between hygiene and laziness, laziness is often the victor.

** To anyone who has been to Morocco, you understand this is saying something.

*** I’m talking about garbage disposal, ect. Not overall pollution/emissions management or clean energy. Obviously we still suck at that.