Most contaminated country we have ever seen

in cleanplanet •  6 years ago  (edited)

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The title doesn’t sound very positive, because what I want to say in this post its not positive at all. Right now we’re travelling across Peru and what we have seen so far is an unforgettable experience. Well, sort of anyway.

Let’s start at the very beginning. Peru was supposed to be a cherry on our South American cake - the problem is that this cherry is rotten and the whole country is highly overrated. It is supposed to be charming, fragrant, tasty and picturesque with all those beautiful landscapes, cute lamas hanging around and happy mammas carrying their kids on the back. But the reality is very different - one can blame the weather and the fact that we tend to travel off the bitten track avoiding typical tourist traps so we see things normally not seen by an average visitor. We love to wander around and outside of city centres and (unfortunately in this case) we have keen eye for details.

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Beautiful landscape isn't?

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So look underneath

I have to admit that Peru shocked me. It was not positive awe but very negative impression. We were already travelling for a while and this was the ninth country we visited so far during this trip. While we crossed from Ecuador to Peru I was shocked seeing tons of garbage littering the whole place.

Somebody might say Oh, come on! Peru has gorgeous mountains, which I have seen on the Discovery Channel or National Geographic. But there is garbage all over the place.
Initially we thought that this might be typical for the border area and if we go further inland this shit would disappear and we would see all those beautiful landscapes other people were talking about. But we were wrong. Three weeks have already passed since our arrival in Peru, and garbage littering roadsides became permanent feature of Peruvian landscape.

Of course, tourist places, like Plaza de Armas in Cusco or Arequipa, which we have visited are stunning and very well maintained. They look like they would in any European country. Here and there one can see some litter but there is nothing strange about that. But if you leave areas frequented by tourists you will see tons of garbage thrown into the river or "promenade" delimited by rows of plastic bags full of trash and this would be the best case scenario because usually garbage is just scattered around.

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Few steps from Titi Kaka lake

I like watching the landscape while travelling by car or by bus. For hours I can sit and look through the window with my headphones on. Until now this was a very pleasing experience because I could relax watching green fields, hills, waterfalls, villages, sheep or cattle. But Peru is totally different and even looking through the window hurts because there is garbage all over the place, in every town, village or city. And it looks like it’s "growing" where the grass should grow.

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Peruvians seem to love plastic bags and bottles which they happily throw out from their vehicles windows. And all this shit ends at the road side. And this seems to be a standard behaviour - believe me I am not exaggerating!
Just a couple days ago during long haul bus ride I have observed a couple sitting in front of us, and those guys were throwing everything through the bus window. We were watching this with disbelief and when Daniel suggested to them that it's not the way they should behave they just laughed.

Similar thing happened to us in the center of Chachapoyas. We were walking across little square which was being renovated and we saw two old Peruvian ladies. One of them dumped plastic plate on the pavement like it was a normal thing to do. Appalled by that we told them (or actually Daniel did because I understand Spanish but I don't speak it very well) that this is not right. I have mildly cursed them with CONCHUDO (this term has been explained to us by one of the tour guides on our way to Gocta waterfall. It's not outright offensive but perfectly describes an ignorant person who litters and doesn’t care about the environment) looking directly into woman's eyes. Apparently she got the message - initially with a sneer she said that as strangers we have no right to tell her what to do in her own country but eventually she picked up damn plate and strolled away with her head down.

Of course this is not our country but it doesn't change anything because it is still our planet! So it doesn't matter if somebody litters in Poland, USA, India or Peru as environmental damage is the same.

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Littering prohibited here - are you sure?

There are literally tons of burned garbage laying around, thrash thrown into rivers and streams or scattered along roadsides, not to mention so called "national parks" which look like big garbage dumps. And all this interacts with our ecosystem - and I mean our (mine, yours) as there are no barriers stopping the proliferation of this shit through water and air to the rest of the planet. After all Peru is not covered by impenetrable dome ;-)

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Typical peruvian bus terminal

This is probably caused by lack of proper education. Uneducated parents pass their own ways of doing things to their children, and those would eventually pass the same to the next generation: sleep well, have kids, have a full belly, throw garbage through the windows, be ignorant and don't care about the world outside. That's our feeling, anyway as typical (well, this might sound like generalization and stereotyping but that's the way we feel) Peruvian doesn't travel too far especially outside the country and doesn't have too high expectations from the life - drive a cab or tuk-tuk, become a parent (not necessarily responsible one), get his bowl of rice, piss whenever and wherever he/she wants (literally) and treat all Caucasians as stupid gringos (because all "whites" are Americans).

Actually so far this is the only country where we feel like we are being not welcomed, just tolerated because we have money and they want it. Sad faces, reluctant interactions and overall feeling of not being really welcome. And those values/habits are passed from father to son, from mother to daughter. So when you add the lack of proper education you get the sorry state of the things.

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*Ruins of ancient town Chan-Chan *

Ok, but maybe we got a wrong impression? Not really - at some stage we had an opportunity to chat with one local lady who was sweeping the pavement (and who was smiling and was willing to chat with us) and she said that she is also scared by the amount of trash floating around her own country. She told us that the problem is known but the government is not doing anything about it. There are no government agencies controlling the garbage processing and police doesn't care even if they see somebody littering, so I assume that environmental protection services are non-existent in Peru.

Daniel explained to her that for us it is a horrible situation and that we don't want to come back to such a place in the future. She accepted our words, apologized for her nation and promised to repeat our conversation to local politicians. Would it matter? We strongly believe that it would and that such little talks with locals (obviously those who are happy to talk) might actually change something for the better.

From the other hand it's very sad that important and well known organizations such as Greenpeace, which have their mouth full of slogans about protecting natural environment and which collect significant funds in due course don't seem to notice such problems as Peru's garbage. In our opinion this is a very important issue and if nothing is done in the years to come some (especially those less touristy) parts of Peru may be covered by thick layers of trash. This problem also affects water supply as rivers are being polluted, water is being contaminated by harmful bacteria increasing the risk of serious epidemics. So eventually people would suffer too if this problem is not properly tackled.

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I have heard that there is this new trend in Poland and picking up the garbage in common areas became fashionable. Be it few pieces or some bags being picked up and disposed of, this always makes a difference. But this doesn't work in Peru, and it wouldn't make sense anyway because there is so much garbage laying around. So even if you picked up garbage all they long, getting back pain in the process, nobody would notice any difference, unless an army of industrial grade garbage disposal vehicles invaded that country and did the cleaning :)

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Jaen city in the north of Peru

It's very sad but at the same time very true and the fact is that locals should change their attitude first - no action would succeed if they don't change their ways and don't learn to manage their own refuse. Initially we thought about organizing some sort of action to do something about that problem but seeing what we saw, we have given up.

Even their politicians do not seem to care. At the moment Peru is in the middle of an election campaign. Posters calling for votes are all over the place. And on those posters there are faces of politicians and slogans promising better future. But it looks like nothing is going to change.

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Thank you for reading my article - I have planned to post it for some time because of what we have seen in Peru. We felt helpless, sad and at the same time very angry as we got an impression that locals don't care and pretend that everything is fine. And we think that there are others who might share our feelings about this country - well advertised and marketed abroad as a prime tourist destination but not delivering on those promises.

For us, Peru is a smart looking poo wrapped in posh paper and I would never recommend going there. And if somebody tells me that he wants to visit Peru I would tell the person to visit nearest garbage dump to feel the climate.

Support @cleanplanet if you want to do something about it!

Thank you,

Monika

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Probably the most beautiful city in Peru - Arequipa

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  ·  6 years ago (edited)

For God sake!

Yep, what else we can say?

Each local case contributes, in a negative way, to a serious global problem. Show and report it is increasingly necessary!

Thank you, @route-m-d

"conchudo"

Sad.

The problem with the poorer countries is that they don't necessarily have the $$ resources to hide their waste as well as wealthier 1st-world nations do.

This is a growing problem globally... I wonder if there are smarter brains than mine attempting to come up with effective and sustainable solutions....?? I hope so.

Wow, as sad as it is to see, I'm grateful know the truth before I reach this destination on my bucket list!

Look at these very sad and worrisome maps!

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Thank you for this report !
@cleanplanet reward good steemians who clean our world in action prooved by video or photography that they put trashes grab in Nature or City and put it in public bin.
We hope that @cleanplanet-fund will help organisations or some persons,one days, to rent maretrials to clean part of Peru or other part of mother Earth.
We have many great ambition.
We want to grow with you.
Let's grab trashes !
Thanks
@cleanplanet

Far out. This deserves a ton of upvotes. I'm gonna share it in a few channels on Discord. I find the same thing in Asia. Really, the mentality needs to change - education is key. Plus, as travellers, buy no plastic. I wrote about this a while ago - no obligation at all but check this

https://steemit.com/ecotrain/@riverflows/plastic-nightmares-or-or-utopian-islands-we-are-responsible-too

came here via @mrprofessor.

happy travels xx may you find places without this, but then again, it's an eye opener and articles like this need to come out x

Thank you for that! We want to show this post to as many people as possible. Our costarican friend will translate it to Spanish and we want share through other, local, South American social media. We already wrote about this issue in Polish on our other profile.

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It's so sad to see - we felt similar when we lived in Bolivia - especially since people worship Pacha Mama :(

It is incredibly sad, such a beautiful countries are getting destroyed because of that.

This is really sad to see @route-m-d and it's a reminder to all of us to trash management in the world, recycling is not sufficient.

The world is in serious danger with all the trash generated, animals are dying in sea and land. I don't see where this will go.

Thanks for sharing


A while ago I watched this TEDx talk and it's quite relevant.

Anyway, the Peru on your photos looks terrible. Apparently, not everybody can follow simple "don't shit where you eat" rule.

So sad, also saw similar situations in Asia. I think not only people needs to get educated, but as you say, politicians don't even care - but I think it comes first, that the government actually gives a better solution for the people to get rid of their trash. As I understand it in many places, there are just no good public garbage solution and people are pressed into throwing it out the window if they don't want to drown inside their houses. The big question is then why all this mess doesn't make people wake up and STOP BUYING plastic in the first place! I guess they have become so used to see the scenery like this that they almost don't remember it could be any other way... Really disturbing...!

Thanks for making people more aware of this. I didn't know it was such a problem there. Hopefully things will change soon.

This has really changed my mind about Peru. I was going to go for the Inca trail and do hiking around the mountains there but if this is how they treat their land, forget it!

Education is needed from all sides but care does as well. People have to be "shocked" in to doing something about their situation (and I don't mean the electrical kind)! I'd say you'd need to do a video series on this if you can bear the pain.

The issue is you need 100% of people around the world to make a difference with cleaning up plastic habits, not 99.99%, 100%. That's going to be impossible to achieve as not everyone cares, or they do care for a short while and then just go back to poor habits. I would love to be proven wrong on this of course but I hope that an invasion of industrial grade garbage disposers does happen :)

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STOP

This is totally sad. This is a common issue and a common behavior in latin america, I'm from Venezuela and the bus terminal of the town I used to live in some months ago was as dirty as that one in your pic, or even more I think. In fact there's a moment in which you kind of "give up" because the fact that I keep a little piece of paper in my pocket in order to not throw it on the street but in my trash can at home doesn't make any difference at all, it feels like giving up but I don't want to, the best little thing I can do by now is keeping it in my pocket till I get home, it's nothing but at least I am not contaminating the city and I feel good with myself. I cannot tell if Peru is the dirtiest of all but I didn't know Peru was THAT dirty, I'm kind of shocked. And yes it's about education partly, there's when you see there's really a difference between latin american and europe for example, progress and awareness depend on education in big part! It's not very pleasant to read things like this but I'm glad you made this post since the truth must be shown in order to make some changes and create awareness! so great post!! and I hope you get to better places! :)

Greetings!

Hello @ailindigo thank you very much for your comment! We saw the difference between Central and South American countries and we can say that Peru is the most contaminated country we have visited. In Colombia they don't care about rivers and we had "pleasure" to saw and feel rio Bogota, which stinks like dead, rotten flesh and its water is black. Something horrible.

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  ·  6 years ago (edited)

Wow guys is this serious? Peru was still on my list to visit once, but this doesn't look promising. This is serious.... :(

This needs more attention, will resteem this one.

This is very serious, tourist places are nice and clean, but just off the track you have on the photos. People don't realise that, because they fly to Lima, then next plane to Cusco and again to arequipa. We travelled by buses, hitchhiked so that's what we found. It's huge problem in here.

but is this thing happening by the locals, or tourists walking around dump their thing and return to the beauty? So sad :(

locals dump their rubbish and walk away from it. No one care :/

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

Got here by @guchtere his resteem... Traveler myself but haven't been here yet. This does look sad...

People do need to change their mentality! Did see this before in Asia but wasn't aware of this in South America.

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i think the whole planet is contaminated and it will remain until all the world leaders resign or de throne them and get us the new generation to fix our earth