What is your advice on improving our community environment?

From: Saleh
To: Selmo
Date: 18/08/2010, 10:43am
Subject:

My name is Saleh al-Fakhouri. I am a high school student. I get your email from my friend Liz Raynold. She said that you are a very helpful person and you can definitely help me. Now I am working on a school project about "pollution caused by daily living and its impact on our community in Jordan". I tried to get some official information, such as statistics online. Unfortunately, none of the results is satisfactory. Could you please help me to answer the below questions? Thank you very much.
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From: Selmo
To: Saleh
Date: 22/08/2010, 01:25am
Subject: RE:

Hey Saleh,

sorry I couldn't reply straight away - I've been very busy the last days.
I'm glad you're doing a project on this - it's a very important subject. First of all, if you haven't already seen it, I'd recommend you watch a film called "The Story of Stuff" (you can watch it for free at www.storyofstuff.org). It's numbers are based on the US, but it shows a lot of VERY important things about the issues of pollution, resource use, recycling etc. Secondly, I'll attach a 2009 report by the Arab Foundation for Environment and Development (AFED) from Lebanon. It has a lot of comparative data about all kinds of pollution and environmental matters from most Arab countries. You will find it a useful resource.

Right. Now I'll try to answer your questions as good as I can:

1. What are the things your company is recycling?

The company I work for is entitygreen.com. We recycle almost any material - paper, cardboard, plastics, metals, glass, wood etc. Well, we don't do the recycling ourselves. We are like an agent between the waste producers (who want to recycle) and the recycling factories - either inside or outside Jordan (most plastic gets recycled in Jordan, also wood and metals, but glass and paper goes abroad, also PET - the water bottles).

2. Where do you get this garbage?

We work with a lot of big hotels in Amman, Dead Sea and Aqaba and help them separate their waste, then we pick it up, do more sorting and store each material by itself - whenever we have a good quantity, we sell it to the factories or to specific traders. We also work with Carrefour and Mecca Mall, taking all recyclables out of their waste. Plus we work with a number of factories out in the east of Amman - in Sahab's industrial areas. All in all, we get to over 10 tons per day of materials recycled, at the moment.

3. I know your company works with companies to get recycle things; do you do this with individual family as well? What about other organizations?

What's important for us, is that we can do this work sustainably. And although most people misunderstand this, sustainability starts with the money. That means if you receive funds to do something (e.g. run a recycling program), it will never be sustainable, because if you ever run out of funds, you have to stop doing it. So the aim is to make enough money from it in order to keep it going for ever (insha'allah). That's why we're a company, not an NGO. So - to get to your question: individual families produce little waste compared to a factory. So to go there and pick up a few bags of something is not financially feasible for us - i.e. not sustainable. So we've offered to the general public to bring their recyclables (if they want to recycle) to our first collection point in COZMO's carpark. There are also drop-off points in the Baccalaureate and American Community Schools, but only for the parents of the children there. In the future, we hope to open more places for people to bring their recyclables.
Door-to-door collection, as you can find in some western countries won't be feasible here for a long time, I think, because the people aren't ready for that - in Germany, we've had public awareness and school-level teaching about this from the 60s... so this is something that needs to come first.

4. I think Amman’s pollution caused by daily living getting worse due to people nowadays consume more stuff than before, can you help me get the statistics in this aspect? I need two time periods as to make a comparison.

I'm afraid I don't have any statistics. But it's very simple: Just think about your grandparents and about yourself now. Everybody will understand this comparison. You'll get a lot of info about this in the Story of Stuff, also.
You had the key word: we are consuming too much stuff!! That's the main point. People need to re-think what makes them happy - they will find that in the end, a new computer, car, hairstyle, t-shirt or plastic toy won't make them happy - at least not for long. In the end, it'll make you unhappy, because it breaks, it's out of fashion or it's too old for all the new updates.
It's other things like social experiences, love, community and being in nature and green that actually make us happy - but we forget that - and the capitalist system is doing everything to help that categoric and universal amnesia.

So - your grandparents "owned" and bought very few things. They had a house, some furniture, some pots & pans and maybe (maybe not) a vehicle of some sort. Maybe some animals and land. There free time they spent enjoying time with family, going for walks or just thinking and relaxing.
Now look at how much we "own/have" - millions of things. How many of these do we need? Very few. And what do we do in our free time? We go to the mall. To buy more. And how much energy (fossil fuel energy, of course) was used to produce and distribute all these things? And how much pollution was created on the way? Lots and lots and lots. That's it. Do you really need numbers? It's very logical.
The problem in Jordan is that a lot of the energy and the pollution I just mentioned is not used/created in Jordan, but abroad, where the products come from - mostly in China. There the people are suffering under it, but we can't see the direct effect here. We see it in waste, of course - and I attach a few pictures of landfills/dumpsites and other pollution in Jordan for you.

5. I also want to know about how to improve our community environment through changing our everyday habits, such as how to save water, re-use water, how to choose environmental friendly package when we shop in the supermarket.

"Environment" means a lot more than just "nature" and that which once was nature or natural. It's also about social, mental and spiritual environment... and that's maybe where we need to start. Again: happiness doesn't come from consumption, but from giving and sharing, moments, memories, love etc. Maybe this sounds too hippy for you, but... this is it, as Michael Jackson would have said.
Of course you can save water - collect rainwater (build a tank in your garden), shower only 3mins and re-use your water in the house (see an example from my house in Ramim) - but most of Jordan's water is used for agriculture and A LOT of it is wasted there - did you ever ask yourself why Jordan plants Bananas as a cash-crop if it's the 3rd water poorest country in the world and every banana needs around 400 litres of water? ...AND if it's cheaper to grow them in South American and ship them to Jordan?
And don't shop in a supermarket - go to your local dukkan, buy loose fruit & veggies and put them all in ONE bag that you brought with you from home. Plus the surplus from buying in a local store will stay in your country, and won't go to the Gulf or France or something, when you buy in Carrefour for example. Don't buy ready-made food, cans etc - eat what's in season and fresh and make things yourself. Buy local food - do we have to have pineapple in every season? Or avocado - to they have to come from Chile in December? Eat them when they're around in Jordan - there's so much great food grown here - no need to buy imported food. This way you won't have ANY packaging!!
And regarding other things: buy in bulk if it doesn't go bad. Invest in good quality, rather than cheap low-quality that breaks after a week or two - that reduces waste, pollution and energy usage, too. If you buy less of the things you don't really need, you'll have more money to spend on the things you need and can afford better quality.

Something else: do you use a bus? Or do you parents drive you everywhere? There's quite a good public transport system in Amman - but the upper third of the population feels to good to use it!

6. What is your advice on improving our community environment and sanitation?

Again - cleanliness, as it says in the Qur'an, comes from faith (an-nadhafa min al-iman) - i.e. from inside. Clean thoughts make a clean house. Corrupted thoughts build a corrupted society and corrupt the environment.

OK. I hope my answers aren't too philosophical. Like I said - check the attached doc for numbers on Jordan etc.

Wish you all the best with your project! let me know if you have any other questions.

Take care,
Selmo


The above questions are what I can think of now, I am sure you have more information in this topic. Especially, videos and photoes as I want to show them to my class. Any of them are very welcome and will be highly appreciated. Thanks again. Yours sincerely, Saleh al-Fakhouri
Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from OrangeJO

P.S.: ...do you need a BlackBerry? :)

Burning of tires and other waste near an electricity station
in the Jordanian desert.

"Unsanitised" landfill in the Jordan Valley, 2km east of the Jordan River
("unsanitised" = dumping waste into a valley)

Same landfill in the Jordan Valley
– clearly visible waste leachate flowing toward the Jordan River,
30km north of the Babtism site.

Driving Ramadan

Today I had both the worst and the best driving experience in Amman ever.

Compared to previous years I have the feeling that Amman's traffic has become really bad this year - there is hardly a time of day where you can get from one part of the city to another – even over short distances – without ending up in a traffic jam. And although I always urge myself to calm, nowadays it's becoming harder and harder to keep from getting really quite annoyed at coming to a halt at the end of a long queue, crawling up tightly packed streets and coughing from the exhaust fumes.

Today, this reached a climax. Throughout the day, as I ran from one meeting to another, I got increasingly late in my schedule because I still miscalculate how long it takes to get from A to B in Amman's crowded streets. After another meeting in which I again had to make another skeptical NGO bureaucrat understand that he'll have to pay for our recycling pick-up service because we have costs to cover and we're not a charity, I got into my car and headed home. Two thirds of the way there, I drove down into a tunnel under a major roundabout – usually the "fast way" to move – and there it was: both lanes packed, cars standing, honking impatiently at the bottom of the tunnel and of course... I was already driving down, so there was no way out. Aaaarrrrrggghhh!!!
"Relax!" I told myself, "turn on your mp3 thing, listen to a radio podcast... some education, NPR, it's allright."
Trying to calm down, I remembered how a year ago heading toward lines of standing cars was a cause of real joy for me - but my mode of transport was rather different back then: I was riding a bicycle. So the joy was to let go of the handle bar just before cycling swiftly and elegantly right through the middle of two rows of standing cars, preferably with hands behind the head, as if taking a sun bath on a lonely beach.

At that time I had only few meetings and plenty of time - I was working for an embassy. I used to take off my formal shirt before getting on the bike, cycle around in a wifebeater and, once I arrived at the destination soaked in sweat, sit for five minutes to dry off a bit, put my shirt back on and go into the meeting. Nowadays I often have five meetings a day in different parts of town, I usually leave myself no time to get from one to the other and I often run late. But the more important difference to last year: now I have a company car... So I've become lazy and dependent on my fast, little, Chinese "Great Wall", although its air-conditioning takes so much power off the engine that I have to use 1st gear even on the slightest of slopes. For that and the obvious environmental reasons, I don't use air-conditioning and despite natural window-ventilation I usually arrive to meetings sweaty.

So today, sitting half way down that tunnel under the roundabout in my silver rice bowl (that's what my brother always calls little Asian cars), which had heated up nicely after a 2-hour sunbath, staring at the line of cars ahead, hoping in vain for a fresh breeze and trying - also in vain - to contain the waves of #ZX*rrrrrrEfY£#* boiling up inside me, I pondered if I should start cycling again...
"Screw all this" I thought. "I'll probably be faster getting to most meetings on my bike... plus the exercise, the awareness factor (-YES, CYCLING IS AN OPTION!-) and the easy parking."

And just as I'm imagining coming home to clean and repair my bike, to get it ready for a radical "from today till tomorrow" change in mobility, I notice, myself standing in the left lane, cars moving on the far right and my driver's brain immediately commands: take the right lane! And then I see it: as the tunnel goes up again, there is an exit to the right, leading to a street below. I hastily squeeze myself through some cars in the right lane, waving with my hands and shouting at people and YES! - I made it and I'm moving... past angrily waiting drivers - HAHA! The exit is basically a sharp 90º curve downwards and while in my head I'm already planning the alternative route and congratulating myself on my clever navigation skills, I drive down around the bend and see... OH NO: two rows of standing cars, exhausts and pollution in another tunnel!
Suppressed anger, cursing and crunching teeth follows. I turn on the mp3 thing, start listening to Owen Bennet-Jones interviewing the boss of Renault Nissan about electric cars and try to get my mind off the traffic. While the guy talks about a global market share of 10% by 2020, I zone out and my mind wanders back to my two-wheeled friend...

Several hours later, at around 8pm, I had just finished my last meeting of the day with Omar Zumot, Jordan's heroic producer of great organic wine, who we're advising in his efforts to produce large quantities of compost, to be able to go beyond organic to bio-dynamic. I get into my Great Wall (what a name for a car brand, honestly! Nothing beats "Volkswagen"...) and head home. And woow... after I hit the main road it takes hardly a minute until I cry out loud: "I LOVE DRIVING IN AMMAN!!"
Well, there's a reason for that: today is the first day of Ramadan. At 8pm the roads are nearly completely empty, not a car in sight - everybody is at home, breaking their fast and filling their starved bellies that aren't yet accustomed to the annual fasting, with tons of food in the company of family and friends.

And as I cruise along in neutral, rolling down toward Rainbow Street, I think how much cooler it would be to shoot down these empty streets on my bicycle...