Garbage

Rubbish trash garbage waste - whatever you want to call it.

It's collected in your house in plastic bags. Once your bags are full you take the bags downstairs, up the road and in to a circular concrete receptacle.The garbage truck comes regularly. They were donated by the Japanese. Once you turn them on, they play a song. There's no turning off of the song. The tune is something that I can imagine would inspire someone to kill others or jump out of a building. It is incessant. It does serve a purpose. When shops hear the garbage truck coming, they send employees running outside chasing after the garbage truck to dump their rubbish.

The trucks pull up beside the concrete receptacle and chuck the garbage in to the back of the garbage truck. Usually they have shovels but no gloves. There are a few people that work with the garbage truck. They all pitch in and chuck the garbage in to the truck. Only the garbage is no longer in bags. The homeless people get money for plastic bottles. As well they scavenge for food. The bags are generally ripped open and the rubbish just blows everywhere.

I'm not sure what happens to the rubbish once it's in the truck. In soum centres I know that they are encouraged to build proper waste disposal areas. If you could ever call waste disposal proper.

I imagine there is a dump somewhere around UB that all the rubbish is chucked in. Waste management is hardly even done well in developed nations, let alone Mongolia. It still makes me sad, and sick, and worried for the environment and the people that rely on the waste to live.

Because you are guaranteed to have your waste searched by homeless people, you can collect plastic bottles in separate bags for them. You can 'throw out' unwanted shoes and clothes knowing they're going to a bloody grateful home. You can 'throw out' unwanted food because you know the people searching through the bags will be hungry.

From now on, I'm going to make much more of an effort to collect and collate my waste in a better way. Bags of food, bags of plastic bottles. No recycling per se but it's just not the official way.

This morning I took 8 bags of rubbish (no one in our house seems to know where the concrete receptacle is) to the bin. I put it off usually because you're assured that there will either be a. homeless people or b. the garbage men at the concrete receptacle. It makes me uncomfortable to have to put down my bags of rubbish knowing someone else has to a.trawl through them to eat or b.shovel them in to a truck on my behalf.

This morning as I approached the concrete receptacle, there was a group of about 6 homeless people who had obviously just had a successful scavenge. The plastic bags were everywhere and they had rucksacks full of plastic and other useful items. As I got closer they noticed my presence and began racing towards me. I never felt scared nor did I feel unsafe at all. I felt disgusting. These people have to go through my rubbish to eat. And I have a spare room. I have a fridge full of food that will probably only half get eaten. But I can't help them.

As I carefully placed my bags down so they could easily get to them, one man said 'Tankyuu viry much' and I tripped as I wasn't expecting it. And then he said 'I am birry hungery'.