10 green bottles
One of things we discovered in Norway was the concept of 'pant'. It's essentially a cash deposit that you pay when you buy bottled drinks or beer cans. You can then return the bottles/cans at a supermarket and get credit on your grocery bill, the deposit ranges from 1 to 2.50 kroner per bottle (about 25 cents to 60 cents). It is quite a common sight to see Norwegians bringing their bottles to the supermarkets on Saturday- which is shopping day.
It can be also be quite lucrative so it is not unusual to see poor people rummaging through dustbins to get hold of discarded bottles/cans. Say you collect 2 big bottles, you can exchange that for a loaf of white bread. Not a bad deal when you think about it. When we went to Frogner Park to see the A-HA concert, we saw a lady who was doing quite well, she had about 4 huge bags full of bottles/cans. She even convinced one of the park cleaners to open up a dustbin for her. Talk about tenacity.
Anyway, our own bottle collection was getting to be of a respectable size so we decided to head down to Rimi today.This is how it works : All supermarkets will have this machine which sorts out your bottles. It is quite interesting how it can differentiate between small bottles that have different pant values. Maybe there is a troll siting on the other side manually sifting through everything.
Anyway, you put the bottles/cans in and at the end of the process, you get a recipt. You hand that over to the cashier and she will scan the bar-code so that you get credit from your grocery bill. Our pant count today was 16 kroners (SGD 4), not bad, we ended up only having to pay 7.50 kroners ( about SGD 1.80).
posted by Bjorg @ 12:45 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Dear Bjorg,
What a delightful blog entry (not making any comments or reference to the last entry by Jose rambling about hearing trees fall in forests and that sort of nonsense)!
Think all this plastic bottle recycling is a dandy idea, and I like the reward system attached to it.
Here in Yamerica, there isn't a reward system to encourage recycling. But somehow it has become fashionable to recycle. Any grade school kid will tell you they recycle because they are saving the earth. And as we know, in Yamerica there can be no greater mission than saving the earth (from themselves, mainly).
But you see, therein lies the irony also. Here people recycle paper, recycle glass, recycle plastic, protest in DC about deforrestation of the Amazon, that whales are becoming extinct, about nuclear proliferation in N' Korea BUT God forbid they have to trade in their energy guzzling cars for smaller fuel efficient ones or take public transport or worse still, walk. Asking them to do that would surely invoke anarchy.
So I ask myself with this whole recycling thing - are we doing what we really should or are we doing what we is easy? Would Mother Earth rather we recycle plastic bottles instead of driving our huge, pollutive vehicles? Maybe its a matter of conscience too - like telling yourself if you order a salad for dinner then you can have all the cheesecake you want for dessert.
Also, I don't think we are thinking about recycling as intellegently as we should. I remember my trip to the Terai region in Nepal a couple of years ago. The draw to the Terai (which is a nature reserve and elephant sanctuary) was to see the rare pink dolphines in the rivers that meander through the flatlands. I remember standing on the banks of the river for hours, with the lonely planet guide thumbed to the page where it said "......common to see the pink dolphines as you stand along the banks........" Hours pass - no dolphin. I see crocodile, fish, all sorts of birds - even a pair of lusty elephants getting their freak on....but no dolphines. A soft spoken ranger comes up to me as dusk falls and asks why I've been patrolling the banks all afternoon. I ask about the dolphins, to which he replies in halting English - Dolphin finish.
Dolphin finish? I was heart broken. How can dolphines be finished? Dinasours finish, dodo birds finish, even Milli Vanilli finish I can understand....but the pink dolphines? Noooooooo (howl).
Upon further investigation the next morning I found out that the dolphines disappeared after some international aid organizations from the developed world decided that the communities in the Terai would become more self sustaining if they began paper recycling mills along the river. As we all know making paper and recycling paper requires a lot of water. So everyone thought it would be a dandy idea - afterall recycling is a wonderful, gentle, kind activity that Mother Earth would not frown upon.
So years pass, the recycling mills thrive, the river becomes polluted, fish die and the dolpines dissappear. The community appears to be happy - jobs are created, people have more income, video nights become a regular event under the banyan tree in the village center. The international aid organizations are happy - they have made the community more financially sustainable thanks to their brain child. The only person who is unhappy is me - I didn't get to see the pink dolphines, and although I did see a pair of elephants get their mojo on, it just didn't cut it.
So you see folks - it goes back to the same question, do we do things because its the easy thing to do, or should we do things because its the right thing to do. I am hoping a pink dolphin from the Terai named Flloyd will read this reply to this posting and set the record straight. Am sure we could all benefit from hearing from a species that became endangered from a recycling project gone awry.
Dear Faithful Reader aka Anonymous,
Thank you for that insightful comment. You also have the honour of being the first to post a comment for posterity on this blog.
Unfortunately, such is the nature of human beings. In a perfect world, one would not need incentives, or mind giving up big guzzling cars or care about having video nights under the Banyan tree in Terai. Sadly, the truth is people do want incentives, do want to be comfortable and do want video nights.
I suppose by and large,most people have a "what is it in for me" kind of approach to life in general. Anthropology might even classify this as a manifestation of the survival instinct. I confess that much of the pant returning that I do (and I do not speak for Jose K) is directly related to the fact that I am a poor student who needs every kroner for groceries.
I suppose people get all squirmy when confronted with this side of human nature. It is so much more noblier (and comfortable) to pretend that one REALLY wholeheartedly and without any ulterior motives cares about the environment.
Self awareness is an under-rated virtue and I am sure that if the people in Terai had been more aware of the future consequences and honest with themselves,Flloyd would be a happier dolphin.
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