Garbage

As many of you know, garbage is a thing for me.  So far, I've seen some pretty sad garbage stuff, and some pretty good stuff. Here is Sri Lanka.

Let's start with the good.  In the last few days, I've been to Colombo and Moratuwa. Colombo is the capital of Sri Lanka. Moratuwa,18km away, is considered to be a suburb city.  Colombo has about 1.7 million people.  Moratuwa about 190,000. 

I liked a lot of what I saw in these cities, garbage wise.  The streets were mostly litter free.  The house we stayed at was separating organics, plastics, metals, etc for collection.  The beach was mostly clean. And our host was proud to say that the jerseys worn by many national team athletes are made from 100% recycled bottles. Yay!

Sadly, things in Negombo are less good.  There's a lot of garbage on the streets and in the canals. There is garbage collection for houses.  But I've seen no signs of household recycling.  And when I tried to reuse a plastic bag in stores, the clerks looked at me with confusion.

Google says that waste is managed at the municipal levelin Sri Lanka.  It looks like there are some great e-waste initiates at the federal level.  But it feels like there's a long way to go..
Pictures
1- Normally, in Moratuwa, each type of garbage is collected on separate days - like Monday is compost, Tuesday is paper etc...But because of the holidays, several types were collected together.  The men in the garbage truck were diligently keeping things separated.  That was very impressive!
2- This fun cage on the beach is meant for garbage.  Cute.  Well intended.  But the spaces in the cage are so big.  Individual bits of garbage just blow out.
3- In Negombo, the garbage container is pulled by this adorable tractor! 
4- A bottle collection station in Negombo Lagoon.  Great idea!  Well used? It didn't look like it...
5- A sign in the National Museum in Colombo.  Great awareness tool.

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