Una basura? Qué es eso?

A trashcan? What is that?

Streets throughout Central America are littered with plastic bottles, grocery bags, candy wrappers, newspaper, and snack packaging. In cities, small pueblos, and along rural highways, trash routinely does not find its way into garbage receptacles.

I sat on a public bus cradling my backpack on my lap and trying not to think of the heat that was pouring up from the streets of Granada, one of Nicaragua's colonial cities. Waiting for the bus' engine to roar to a start and counting the seconds until air would be flowing through the windows, I watched a kid lick his candy wrapper clean. Satisfied with his snack, he reached up and dropped the plastic wrapper out the window. Realizing that I was staring, I diverted my attention to another section of the bus just in time to see a woman chuck a plastic plate and fork out the window.

Why do the majority of people here not think about where they should put their waste? Can it be simply attributed to the fact that they don't care? Because surely people would rather have a clean city. Right?

The public bus took us from Granada to Masaya, where we then transfered to a microbus - a 12 person van that typically crams 25 people between the seats. The microbus dropped us off in San Juan de La Concepcion, a small town in the mountains of Nicaragua. Later that day, Amanda and I sat on a concrete wall watching a local baseball game. We finished our cookies that we had bought for 10 cents at the small closet-sized store and looked around for where to dispose of our wrappers. Amanda stuffed hers in her pocket to deposit later. I continued to look around the park's edges. There were no trash cans. The park was covered in litter. A baseball player dove onto a pile of plastic.

In one of my language classes, we spoke about the trash problems in Nicaragua. A large part of the issue, my teacher told me, stems from the education system. Schools don't teach the proper disposal of waste and many kids, who later grow into adults, think that plastic will deteriorate just as a banana peel will. Additionally, there are problems with municipal trash disposal. Families must pay a monthly fee for the city to pick up their garbage every week. When faced with several bills that are difficult to pay each month, many families choose water, electricity, (and unfortunately television), over garbage. Many families instead decide to burn their trash in their yards. Which is not a pleasant or easy thing to breath in. Nor is it good for the environment.

To find a solution for the trash problems of Nicaragua, and of Central America, is a very daunting task. There is so much garbage that needs to be cleaned up before even being able to set a good example. And then, for the trash that does successfully make it out of the city, the landfills are often built on hills and are contained with barbed-wire fences. What will the solution be? Will there be one? While I don't want to be a pessimist, it's hard to think that this situation will be alleviated anytime soon.