Buddha would use the net: 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.
(...)

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? :)