Okay, so I have been reduced to drinking bottled water, and the irony is not lost on me that I am now living a reluctant and uncharacteristic plastic-laden lifestyle mere months after hosting anti-plastic activist Beth Terry (author of Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too and of the blog "My Plastic-free Life") at school. (Here's my write-up of that visit for the NWS blog.) The shop stalls of Addis Ababa are awash with plastic goods (pictures coming). They're wonderfully inexpensive and convenient, but cheaply-made and awful for the environment. While short-lifespan plastic products are a lousy use of resources under any circumstances, it seems worse here where there is no infrastructure for disposing of them. Much waste festers on the roadside or in vacant lots. Some gets burned - either on the street or at the dump, and there is no recycling to speak of - except for refillable glass bottles and lots of re-use/re-purposing out of both resourcefulness and necessity. |
| An instructive graphic from the UNDP's Human Development Report showing that nearly all of the countries with a sustainable current lifestyles are among the planet's poorest and least developed, such as Ethiopia. |
As car-choked and polluted as this sprawling city is, the average Ethiopian's environmental impact is still far below the average citizen of a developed country (even if our cities are cleaner and more organized). According to Louise Carver of the Population and Sustainability Network in a 2009 publication, "The average American emits about two hundred times more carbon dioxide than the average Ethiopian" and "For every 1,000 people in Ethiopia, there are only two motorized vehicles (compared to 787 motorized vehicles per 1,000 Americans)." I'm guessing that since 80-85% of Ethiopia's population is reportedly still rural farmers, the overwhelming majority of the country's carbon emissions come from the capital city - and they're taking a toll on my poor lungs!
Haha I remember the smell of the fresh carbon emissions from the capital of Accra and Kampala; it really does take a few weeks to get used to it! Also I know how hard it is to be forced to utilize plastic so much and then not have a clean/green way to dispose of it!
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