Weather, Garbage and Environment

A few days ago in Buenos Aires on my dad's birthday, we went with the bus from Recoleta (where we will stay this month) to SanTelmo. My brother plays soccer there and I play hockey. When we finished it was drizzling and then raining a bit and than all of a sudden there was lightning with thunder and it was pouring with rain. We quickly went back home and showered and watched the 8 o'clock news. On the news it was said that in some places there was water flooding from 8 centimeters to a few meters. The subway was closed down and traffic lights had stopped working. Lots of buildings had no electricity and there were many ambulances and fire engines with loud sirens.There were even people killed. The whole city of Buenos Aires was upside down!


Happy Birthday 

On the 1st of February it was my father's birthday. We were still in Tigre, a place 45 minutes from Buenos Aires (next week's story). We had a fun time and left in the afternoon to go to our new apartment in Recoleta. While we unpacked and prepared for my dads birthday party, the storm started over Buenos Aires. Later that evening we went outside in the poring rain and finally found a restaurant where we met 3  environment experts from the Netherlands.





What do the experts say
I have interviewed Leo, Bob and Robert who are Dutch and live in Holland, Eindhoven and Nijmegen. They are environment experts. They studied Environmental Protection. They also think that Buenos Aires is dirty. In the richer places it is cleaner and in the poor places it is dirtier with litter in the streets and overflowing containers. They have traveled a lot and they said that India is the dirtiest country and Singapore the cleanest in the world.
In BA they don't have separated waste like in Holland and South Africa. That is why they are here in Argentina, to try to introduce separation of waste. However, there are many poor and homeless people who take out plastic and what they need and leave a big mess leaving all the garbage around the streets. Then the rain washes the garbage in the streets and this is how the drainage system gets blogged, causing flooded streets.
After the waste is collected every day, they don't reuse the plastic. In South Africa they reuse many materials by making beautiful accessories like earrings from bottle tops and gift boxes out of plastic and beads out of paper.
Leo, Bob and Robert said that we SHOULD'NT LITTER and, DON'T USE A LOT OF ENERGY. The small things that you can do can make a big difference in the world.!!!!!!

Photo: Steven Kreeftenberg from L to R : Loes,Leo,Robert,Bob.

                                                         

                           ECO expert ??????

Gracias


 Louisa