Sustainability

            Before coming to Bahía, I didn't think that sustainability would be on my mind so much here. The people here do live such healthier lives than in the U.S., though. Watching this 20 minute video made me feel so angry yet happy to have lived in a place where people use what they NEED, recycle, and don't need to buy a new grill every year. Just by living in the house with Doña Mariana, I have seen it. First of all, the people here don't really buy dog food. They give them leftovers. Even though we try as hard as we can to finish what we area given, we still have left overs. Rarely does any one go back for seconds. If Doña has left over plantains from breakfast, they will be in the soup for lunch. When no one eats the bananas, she makes her delicious platano pancakes. Instead of throwing away the cream from warmed up milk, she makes healthier butter out of it. This way of live even affects how long we shower. Now we are all saying how surprised we are that a 30 minute shower can turn into a 5 minute shower. Once we were told that our water could run out, we became conscious of it. Why hasn't this idea hit us on a global scale? I mean, we shower and flush with drinking water. Why hasn't any one hit us over the head yet? 

In front of a sustainability mural in Bahía. You don't see these where I'm from.

           People make plant pots out of old buckets. There's also a guy who drives around in a truck and pays to collect junk, if there is any at all. I do wonder what the dump around this area is like and how it affects the environment. Things do just feel cleaner here. There are no factories spewing dark clouds of dioxin nor are there strips of fast food joints that seem to have taken over the rest of the world. People own restaurants, but often times they are just downstairs from their homes. The money goes straight to them and the costs are not externalized (these terms come from the video)The only thing, though, that the kids buy over and over again are cell phones. This video made me think a lot about perceived obsolescence and how people keep buying new cell phones or lap tops because in 5 years, they feel as if their old ones are useless.

           This place is pretty clean too. You don't see a lot of garbage laying around. Also, when you go to buy a coke in a glass bottle at the grocery store, they make it so that you have to return the bottle. This also makes me think of how in France it shocked me at first that they actually charged for plastic bags. You were encouraged to bring your own. In the U.S. they hand them out like candy. Any way, watch this video. It makes sense why the U.S. is all about consumption and how the notion of "fashion" is just a way of getting people to buy new things and to never be satisfied with what they have. I hope this video makes you more conscious about what consumption means to you. Next time you go shopping, ask yourself if you really NEED or if if someone else has told you that you do.