Plastic Won't Be a Problem in Bhutan

In school we were told plastic was among the worst things that could pollute our environment because it would not disintegrate in 800 years, ok, just say forever. It means that the very first batch of plastic mankind produced, which was in 1862, hasn't yet disappeared and in last many year god knows how much more plastic the world would have produced. Imagine if Zhabdrung had thrown a plastic bag in a field in Punakha it would still be there. But don't worry there wasn't plastic during Zhabdrung's time.

From 1862 to 1970, plastic was seen as a magical material that could be crafted into variety of shapes and substitute precious natural substances like tortoiseshell, ivory, horn, and linen. The revolutionary discovery gained the reputation of being the saviour and protector of natural environment because it drastically reduced on the hunting of elephant and tortoise.

It was the beginning of material abundance that helped people gain access to affordable essential resources when inexpensive plastic replaced the scarce natural resources. Things became cheaper, lighter, safer and stronger. The development of computer, cellphone, and all the advanced technology was made possible by plastic, including electricity and transportation. It raise the living standard of people.

Suddenly in 1970s world woke up and made the once saviour of the natural world into the terror of the natural world. It wasn't the plastic that changed its property suddenly in 1970s. It's like the common Bhutanese saying about how even mother's breast milk can be poisonous if over-consumed. Human beings began using plastic in everything and everywhere without considering where it would land up at the end.

Plastic clogs drainage systems and flood cities, it overwhelms landfills and leach out dangerous chemicals that are threats to lives, in river system it can endanger aquatic lives, it will soon invade our agricultural fields make them infertile, and at the end it will take away our forest. But remember plastic doesn't go there on their own, it's us who ill-manage it. Plastic is a Frankenstein and we are being very insensitive with it.

But in Bhutan we have our smallness on our side, today it may seem like we have plastic problem but if you have observed carefully, one moment you see lots of plastic bottles thrown around and next moment it's gone. It's just a matter of one good solution, because plastic is a magical element. My little niece Bumchu won't leave any plastic pottle at home or in our cars, because her school has the practice of collecting and selling plastic waste to Greener Way.

Now Greener Way has a local market in The Green Road right in Thimphu, where a young entrepreneur, Rikesh Gurung, with the technical capacity and legal right in executing the revolutionary idea of using plastic in blacktopping roads has opened shop. "The technology involves coating of aggregate with molten waste plastic before it is mixed with bitumen. Besides being an effective solution to plastic waste menace, it brings down considerably the cost of laying roads and enhances their life."-The Hindu
Thimphu alone produces 50 tonnes of plastic waste daily and the landfill has over 200,000 tonnes of plastic, says the founder of The Green Road, which means he will have enough resources to make better and cheaper roads in the country, and he will not run out of his key ingredient. And the best part is plastic in Bhutan will not be a problem anymore.

But I'm surprised Rikesh's idea didn't receive red-carpet welcome in the country. If our concerns about plastic waste were genuine and all the headlines meant anything serious I would expect the government to hug the young man because his project can kill two cockroaches at one spank; better road and plastic management.

Interestingly before Rikesh could showcase his first task of blacktopping 30 meters road in Thimphu, another project made a headline. It's about a technology that will be setup at the landfill to convert plastic into crude oil. I am throughly confused now. Rikesh has multi-million plant setup and now another project is threatening to steal away his raw material, what is this all about? Do we have so much plastic waste to feed two big projects? While the rest of the world is suffocating in their plastic waste, it looks like we are going to face plastic waste scarcity. Anyway, it's good for us!

Crime Hidden in Pine Forest

In 2003, I was severely ill in the first week I reached Sombaykha Primary School. I wanted to run back home but I was officially four days away from everything familiar to me. I knew I was going to die in the place so new and so remote. Everything about the place made me lonely. It was then that I accidentally broke a thick red ruler in headmaster's office. You won't believe how the scent of pinewood that came from the broken ruler suddenly made my heart race. I took the two broken pieces with me and kept them hear my pillow. From the next morning I felt more alive than ever.

Coming back to Paro and living among the Pine trees is a gift of natural happiness. I know the trees, I grew up with them, I played on their branches and slept under their shade. The scent from the free sends me heart dancing. I am home. But wait, what's under those trees?

Below my training centre in Dop Shari, there is a small patch of pine trees. It's too small to be called a forest but the small group of trees seemed to have survived so many human interventions. Between the trees and the road there is clearly a pit overflowing with garbage. It doesn't seem like a recent activity but now that we live and work in that area, people could easily blame it on us. My colleague Ram took it on to himself to clear that area as part of his social initiative. He got us gloves and sacks.

We thought an afternoon would be enough but as we dug we discovered that the place was used for ages. The waste was obviously from a hotel- countless wrappers of milk, sugar, biscuit, frozen chicken, wine bottles, broken plates and glasses, carton boxes,... It doesn't require much intelligence to analyse that the former occupant of our office was responsible. This place was earlier a tourist hotel, and evidently a very irresponsible one.

Tip of Plastic Iceberg

What we discovered later broke my heart completely. Beyond the pit, cleverly hidden under the pine trees was a secret world of plastic. It was clearly years of intentional and irresponsible dumping of plastic waste, which should be a criminal offence to the nation. It's a wonder how the authorities didn't spot at least the pit that was just below road to Paro Dzong.

The bigger question is, where are other hotels hiding their waste? I have seen a few patches of landfill here and there in Paro. Above Gaptay I have seen a depression in the woods filled with hotel waste, and above that I have seen at least three hotels. It seems to a trend in Paro to hide their waste in the woods. I would therefore like to alert National Environment Commission and Tourism Council of Bhutan to investigate this issue in Paro and perhaps elsewhere in the country. 

Revealing the Hidden

In Paro the problem must have cropped from the failure of the Dzongkhag Municipal. I assume that they can't possibly assist the hotels in managing their waste when they seem to fail in managing the waste in the middle of the town. The waste collecting trucks are small and manually operated, and the frequency of collection seems very less. The bins placed at prime locations are small even for a single user, and therefore are seen overflowing perpetually. Everything seems so half hearted.

Wherever the problem is there seems to be a serious need of intervention. This beautiful country we are so proud of may soon lose its countless adjectives, and our proud environmental efforts may just turn into myths on paper. 

Paro Has a Problem

Paro is a gateway to Bhutanese economy, and that explains why our economy is unhealthy. I am quite new to this place to understand the secret to how they managed to keep the town so dirty. It's amazing how people can adapt to living in dustbins and I don't quite know how responsible authorities manage to sleep peacefully.

Someone told me a story about attitude of business people in Paro town; Once an elderly woman was seen dumping her waste in the drain in the middle of town, and as matter of fact he went to ask her to take care of her waste. You know what she replied? "O Boy, don't worry, scouts will come to clean up the town on Saturday." It's clear that all the good intentioned cleaning campaigns school children conducted in the town went on to pamper these people and it only taught them how to take waste for granted.

I confirmed the story firsthand within my short stay in this place. One day Clean Bhutan brought along a passionate group of college students and cleaned the entire town. For the first time I saw the town clean. As always it took a cleaning campaign to let the town breadthe fresh air. I don't know how no Parob felt guilty about letting people from as far as Shrubtse and Gedu colleges clean their town. Quite obviously, unthankfully, and unfortunately I saw the town back to its sorry state just a few days later. Following are the pictures of one spot I took to show you the state of Paro over the past weeks. Now they are waiting for another cleaning campaign! 

Before the Cleaning Campaign

After the Cleaning Campaign

Later, and few days after

People living in this place should know that their irresponsible way of living could damage the image of the whole country. While they deserve to suffocate on their own garbage, they should not forget that they live on the gateway to Bhutan. Tourism keeps the heart of Paro beating and it's their natural responsibility to make the place worthy of the privileges it gets. Be it the town or the way to Taktsang, it's time Paro stopped waiting for the goodwill of responsible people from elsewhere.

Jangsa Bridge

 For now there seems to be no municipal body in Paro, and if there is one perhaps it's time they surprise us by justifying their role. The location and size of mobile dustbins should be intelligently changed. The frequency of garbage collection around the town should be upscaled. Irresponsible people should be heavily fined, because education seemed to have failed but again they might say the garbage trucks don't turn up or the dustbin in the town corners are tiny. So basically it must begin with the change in system. I still remember following a garbage collection tractor along airport road that spilled waste all over the place as it sped ahead of my car. The plastics were flying on to my windscreen and sacks of waste were dropped on the road. Can you believe these were the people entrusted to manage waste?

Tamchoe Lhakhang

I also think the handicraft shop owners should lend their clean hands to make the town clean for their potential costumers to happily visit them. The same should be the moral responsibility of Guide Association of Bhutan and Association of Bhutanese Tour Operators (ABTO) to make the town welcoming for their bread to fly in. It is more than ever important to let Paro shine and glitter because 2015 is going to be big for tourism industry as Bhutan observes Visit Bhutan year. If Thimphu is the heart of Bhutan, Paro is truly the face and we can't present a dirty face to our guest. We haven't done it thus far and let us not set an unglamorous precedent by doing it when we are inviting the world to come visit our pristine country. 

Bottomline: Stop giving Paro fish, teach Paro how to fish!

(I think everybody knows about the effect of solid waste on our environment and ultimately on ourselves, therefore I am not discussing the cliché in this article.)

Being the Change, Beyond Complaining

I spent my summer vacation well. I attending workshop by the day and met friends in the evenings. I made some new friends and caught up with old friends. I interviewed a several people and several people interviewed me. I met with some people with whom I have always wanted to meet. I am soon blogging about them.

Animated Introduction. Picture: BCMD

I know you don't like reading about workshops, neither do I but this workshop was different. This workshop was not about some far-fetched theories and endless handout that would go to dustbin on the way back home. It was neither one of those namesake workshops to finish certain budget. It was about awakening, about realizing our power to change things, small things around us. We spent five days inspiring ourselves and the next five days going out into the real world to make real changes.

The workshop was called Community Mapping, technically it was about locating issues and asserts in the community and getting it literally on the map. We were carrying Android phones loaded with unicef GIS mapping app. The app helps in pinning the pictures we take onto the map using Global Positioning System. But that's just the tool, the soul was how we go beyond clicking pictures and identifying problems, yes it was how we device solutions to the problems.

The unicef Map. Click on the picture to view the real map.

Problem in our country is that most of us don't know a problem is a problem, and the few who could see the problem think it's not their problem. During the workshop we were shown inspiring documentaries from around the world about problems and people- about individuals and community who led changes, who became part of solution, who went beyond just complaining about the problems.

The participants were students from high schools and colleges and I was among the few teachers. The best part of working with young people is that they don't have preconceived doubts and therefore they aren't shy about trying. Soon they make us believe that it's all so possible, and believing is success half achieved.

After five days of inspiration in the BCMD Media Lab we identified issues in Thimphu community to address as our real project. The problems we shortlisted were;

1. Management of waste party goers leave behind at Buddha Point
2. Getting City Bus to Changedaphug (Kala Bazar)
3. Campaigning against taking packaged food as Tshog (Offering) to Lhakhangs
4. Appointing a community caretaker at a labour camp 
5. City Bus vegetable vendors on stalls.

(Read about the projects in detail by clicking on the picture of the Map)

Any average citizen would say these are none of our business, but the workshop taught us to more than that, we started believing that every little issues within our community, within our country or the  world is our business. If we can bring a positive change we must do it. So for the next five days we were on the field researching, interviewing, seeking support, connecting people...

My Team with Thimphu Thrompon

On the last day we presented our project outcomes at the Tarayana hall filled with distinguished people who were themselves change makers, policy makers or people who had stake in the development of the city and its community. They all seemed very impressed and the stakeholder promised to render their support.

One striking quote from the presentations, a students said, " We came all the way from the east to put dustbins at Buddha Point". 

Bottom line is, if a streetlight is kept on during the day, some people will not notice at all, some will see and feel nothing, some will know it's waste of energy, some will click a picture and post it on Facebook or Twitter, in this workshop we were inspired to take the next step- to call the authority and inform them directly about it. This is one small change anyone can bring in a community.

During our field trip we saw a big log blocking the drain along the City Bus Parking. The log could clog the drain and during the monsoon it could flood the whole parking. Normally I would have just taken a picture of that log and posted on the Facebook, but this time I gathered my team and tried to take the log out. But it was too big for team of three men. Hundreds of people around the parking area just watched us with that's-not-our-business look. An Indian guy came by and told us that he will call his friends and do it. I was so touched until he asked 'How much is the budget?' So we went to the city office and asked for some labour to help us. There was no labour that day but they asked the location. Next day we went there to find the log was removed. 

Before

After

The workshop was conducted by Bhutan Center for Media and Democracy. I encourage Media Clubs in schools to get in touch with them and book your place for next segment of Community Mapping workshop. It can surely change you into change maker. Special Thanks to Tshering Eudon and Tsho Tsho for being such a great facilitator. 

Who will take the Broken Glass?

Last week we got to see a few Bhutanese entrepreneurs who made living on waste business, whose business has moral beyond money. I would like to congratulate Karma Yonten for his visionary Greener Way. He has made it his moral responsibility to take care of our waste while the rest of us wait for the government to handle it.
Last month a few people from some organizations came to talk to us on waste management, and they enlightened us on how we could locally do what Greener Way is doing in Thimphu. I asked them about the Broken Glasses and they said it has no commercial market, therefore it goes to Landfill. That didn't surprise me because I knew it already, but I at least expected them to have a better suggestion.
Then I asked if they would fund a project that would make use of Glass waste and create commercial market right here in the country, to which they said they have no considered that yet. Which means they only bank on stuff that will sell, and not on making things sell. This is very Bhutanese in nature.
I know Greener Way has done so much to demand any more from them, but I also know a young engineer who has tried to use glasses in concrete (Ask him how he was going to do that). He has done a project on this and even went meeting people but he gave up on the way because he only received warm doubts, and cold cynicism from people of whom he expected support. He was going to create commercial market for broken glasses but he realized we are only waiting for India to open up markets.