As Keith already wrote, Cairo is a smoggy, crowded and chaotic city of nearly 20 million people. Seeing trash on the sidewalks, while unfortunate, is not unexpected. Nor is it all that different from the city sidewalks back home in Philadelphia. Outside of the Center City District, which imposes a quasi-governmental tax on local businesses and residents to fund a force of workers who keep the sidewalks clean, Philadelphia’s sidewalks are often strewn with litter, including, of all things, chicken bones. With so many people, high unemployment rates and little money to spare, keeping Downtown Cairo trash-free is clearly not a high priority for the government. It’s hard to throw stones when home is the quintessential glass house.
Then we arrived at the Great Pyramids of Giza, often at the top of the list of the Seven Wonders of the World. There, in the sand that surrounds the Pyramids, we spot a crushed plastic water bottle. Then another. And another.
Candy bar wrappers, broken glass, cans, papers and plastic debris. It’s everywhere you look, and it’s a shame. Here is the primary driver for tourism in Egypt, visited by millions of tourists each year and a huge moneymaker for the Egyptian economy, and it is completely filled with trash. Not only do we have to crop out other tourists from our photos, but the trash that seems to fill the bottom of nearly every shot. The other tourist sites around Egypt don’t fare much better when it comes to the proper disposal of litter. I don’t recall seeing chicken bones on the sidewalk next to the Liberty Bell, do you?
But it gets worse.
Walk along the boardwalk in Dahab, a beach resort town on the Red Sea that is popular with divers and snorkelers. On any given morning you will see the hotel and shop owners sweeping up the trash along the pathway.
Onto the beach.
And eventually into the sea and the coral reef, the reason that the divers and snorkelers are here in the first place.
There are trashcans along the boardwalk and signs asking people not to improperly dispose of their
garbage. But the beach seems like an easier place to dispose of the litter that accumulates. While diving and snorkeling, the beauty of tropical fish and corals is often disrupted with stray plastic bags and broken bottles floating in the clear waters.
I understand that Egypt is a poor country and most people are struggling just to get by, let alone get educated about the environment and do something to preserve it. The concept of sustainability, rooted in terms of the resources that will be available to future generations, doesn’t work when the struggle is about surviving the day today.
Maybe I am just a product of an over-sanitized American culture that most of the rest of the world can’t afford to duplicate. Maybe I completely internalized the “Give a Hoot” commercials from my childhood and am programmed to be appalled by litter. Regardless of the environmental impact, actively destroying the natural assets that are at the core of one’s own livelihood just doesn’t make economic sense. No reefs, no divers. No divers, no businesses. No businesses, no jobs.
Am I just a spoiled American experiencing culture shock? Am I missing something that explains why it is acceptable to litter at the sites of ancient wonders and world-class coral reefs? What can I do as a tourist to promote values of sustainability in the places I travel?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
My first though is that poverty must checkmate sustainability and environmentalism. But on further reflection I’ve been to some pretty poor areas of the world over the years both here and abroad and I’ve always been amazed by how neat and clean the locals were. So maybe something else of a cultural nature is going on.
On a more positive note, once you get past the trash the treasures of Egypt seem pretty amazing.
Godspeed and safe travels on the next leg of your trip.
xoj
I have two things here: One story that has been kind of buzzing around the infectious disease community is that when Egypt killed all of its pigs in a frenzy of swine flu fear, they set off another entire infectious disease conundrum because pigs roam the streets in whichever town this was and eat all kinds of waste normally left on the streets (with no formalized sanitation services). So, without the pigs, people were being exposed to all kinds of new poor sanitation related plagues. Obviously poverty and total idiocy combined never end up well. Anyway… the other thing…
I’m with you guys– trashing the environment is both a huge contributor to and result of poverty.
In Haiti, this drives me nuts. Two huge contributors there to the complete lack of food, farming, and tourism industry in Haiti are deforestation (not to mention a hotbed of disaster– hurricane + hills + mud), which is a massive problem inland, and trash that literally clogs the oceans. It’s amazing to think of what Haiti looked like before the US started using the island as a trash dump (literally sending barges over to dump american trash on their coast). Their beaches are literally two feet deep in garbage, which extends probably half a mile out to sea. Slums and even nice parts of the city have no sanitation services and so are also covered in garbage. Goes without saying, living on a giant pile of trash isn’t the healthiest situation, nor is not eating, or having everything you touch be contaminated with waste. Advances in public sanitation are probably the greatest health interventions of all time, and I’d say 90% of the health interventions we make in Haiti have a basis in the ruined environment.
Trust me, I’m a spoiled american too– and very far from a tree hugger at home. As a philadelphian, I am also too lazy to find a trashcan while eating drumsticks while walking down the street. But I’m a pretty strong proponent of developing countries getting a handle on this situation, because it has a massive trickle down effect. Maybe you guys should relaunch the “who gives a hoot” campaign but replace the owl with a camel or a goat some such to make it culturally appropriate.
Liz thanks for the additional examples of ignorance in Egypt. While they do not have monoply on it there is plenty to go around. In fact when we were crossing the boarder from Israel to Jordan we bumped into another couple that was now going to Jordan because the Egyptian border authorities, who had told them on the phone a Friday afternoon crossing would be no problem, told them when they arrived on the 4 hour bus from Jerusalem that they could not cross until Sunday, how conveniant.
Also I like the give a hoot camel. Camels are surly and mean, just the attitude needed for this job.