🛖 Cambodian Cabin Renovation Project 🪚 The Trash Heap Blocker 🚯
The rainy season is tapering off and 4 of my Cambodian in-laws are staying with us while helping with various construction projects.
Bye Bye Neighbor's Trash Heap 🚯
Living within a wildlife sanctuary inside a national park, dealing with trash heaps is not something you'd think you'd have to deal with, but this is Cambodia. Even though everyone in the village pumps water from the same river, it hasn't stopped everyone from creating massive trash heaps behind their houses. When I witnessed my neighbor's trash heap topple over like a scene from the movie Idiocracy, I decided we needed to do something about it.
We recently moved into the cabin and have been trying to experience it from the "guests'" point of view. Taking personal responsibility is not something most Cambodians are good with, and I hate to say that, but that's my opinion after living here on and off nearly 15 years. Getting my neighbor to clean up her trash heap is out of the question, and I purposely bought land upstream from nearly everyone because I am aware of most people's lack of willingness to deal with garbage and pollution.
Lack Of Responsibility 🤬
The irony is that this neighbor pumps water from the river only centimeters away from where her trash heap juice flows into it. It's a very solvable problem because people here all drive motorbikes and cars to the nearby towns daily and could easily bring along a small bag of trash on each trip like we do, but nobody cares enough for that. I feel more than blessed to live in such a beautiful place, and even though not a Buddhist myself, if I were I think the bad karma of disrespecting nature would haunt me. By looking at the above pic, can you tell how the my nephew-in-law is suspended in the air?
In Cambodia the only solution to this is to build a wall and pretend it doesn't exist, so that's what we did. I don't want visitors to combine Cambodia's most beautiful view with a massive trash heap, but in a sense that's kind of the paradox of this country. Anyone likely venturing out this far likely already has a more realistic sense of how things work here, so I'm not overly concerned about it, but still wanted to block the view a wee bit.
What Trash Heap? Where? 🕵️♂️
In the end I decided on a wall in the same style of our fence, staggered pickets to allow some air and light to pass through, but enough to block the view and also provide some wind protection for a future corner kitchen. We also put up a gutter to make to stop the wind from the blowing the rain back in when it falls off the roof. It's already a much more usable space, and I think guests will enjoy the new sense of privacy the balcony now has.
JOIN HIVE WITH A VIP TICKET - BYPASS THE VERIFICATION PROCESS - EARN CRYPTO
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In my country around the 2000s, the area I lived in would have a pit where people would throw away trash, then collect it with leaves and burn them. This caused pollution to the environment, but that was something they could do in the countryside. . Currently, there are companies operating waste collection services. I think if we combine people to collect trash in the area and move it somewhere else, it will be very good for the environment
It's a shame because everyone could easily afford to do that, hire a truck to come once a month and take everyone's garbage to the small landfill in the town 60km away. The bigger problem is that nobody cares about health or nature, and even when I inform Khmer people about dioxin and its cancer-causing effects, they usually laugh and just continue holding their baby in their arms while they burn plastic.
There is a problem with many Khmers believing that foreigners are stupid and also a lot of racism. I truly believe that people think I am lying when I talk about burning plastic and the dangers of dioxin, and it is far too common that many Khmers sit around and blame all of Cambodia's problems on Vietnam while never taking any personal responsibility for the condition of their surroundings.
Yuck!
Do people compost at all?
Maybe a good opportunity for a "borehole" like fund to pay for the clean up??
Do people burn their garbage ever? Gross, I hate that I'm even suggesting that as an option 😂
So many people farm but so few people know any sustainable techniques of any kind. Even mulching isn't really understood for basic weed control. People prefer bushwhack their property and burn it all in piles instead of leaving it as mulch.
I hate to admit the reverse question should be asked, "Do people ever not burn their garbage?" Only in super dense urban areas do people not burn trash. Everyone in my village burns their rubbish, and some don't even do that, rather just let the river make it the Gulf of Thailand's problem. Our neighbor asked us the other day why we were taking two small bags of trash with us on our motorbike, and we basically told her that it's not a big deal to just take small amounts of trash with us every time we go to the town. I could see by the look in her eyes that she was thinking about how stupid we were.
The only burning option I would be okay with is incineration, but for how small-scale it would be and how dirty incinerators are until they reach operating temperatures, I think we'd run out of trash to burn just as things starting becoming smokeless.