Friday 21 May 2010

Utter garbage

You know, you can confirm the position of a country on the UN's Human Development Index by the way garbage is collected. In Liberia (at the bottom of the HDI), stinking and maggoty garbage was infrequently removed by hand into open trucks (Liberia didn't have one single working garbage truck when we were there). In Benin (further up the HDI) garbage was emptied (again by hand) from wheelie-bins into a proper garbage truck. And in Togo (even further up the HDI) garbage is carried in big dumpsters by dumpster trucks, and none of it gets touched until it arrives at the land-fill site. Photo of the Ghanaian "Zoom Lion" garbage contractor about to pick up one of our full dumpsters. Yet another fascinating blog entry by Olly.

No comments: