Whether in Asia, Europe or the US, it seems that the easiest way to deal with garbage has been to dispose of it to somewhere we cannot see it, or at least, we dont see it on our doorstep everyday, in Indonesia, you add to this the lack of rural refuse collection and you end up with people throwing their rubbish into rivers, well in actual fact onto the banks of rivers and with the first floods all this accumulated rubbish gets washed down to the sea.
What about towns/cities?
Again a similar scenario takes place, but instead of the river banks the rubbish is "litteraly" swept into ditches and gutters, all of which lead directly to the sea.
In Manado we have also another problem..the ferries, with daily departures and arrivals of upto 8 per day carrying on average 300 passengers, over journeys of between 6 and 14 hours.....what happens to the rubbish they create? whoops...all overboard, do I blame the ferry companies, not really, they have little or no alternative as the harbour area in Manado has no Refuse collection and though Indonesia has signed an International agreement on Waste disposal at sea, its not implemented or enforced.
Of course we all know that the solution would be; a) infrastructure; b) education: both of these take time and time is something that is not on our side at this moment, though we must ensure that the above 2 must be prioritised, this is for tomorrow, but we have a responsibility ALSO for today.
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