Rivers of Trash

The islands of Chuuk are very small and very isolated. As a result, waste disposal is a serious problem. In the last 50 years, western products have been introduced into this island paradise and brought a higher standard of living. However, these outside products also brought plastic, paper, rubber, styro-foam, and all kinds of wrappers onto the doorstep of the unsuspecting Chuukese.

The islanders have lived for thousands of years in a society where littering and pollution are non-existent issues. After you drink a coconut, you can throw it in the bushes and it will soon decompose. Foods are traditionally wrapped in leaves, which are easily disposable. Leftovers were recycled by the processes of nature. There was no reason to think of waste management. However, once they made the jump from leaves to plastic, they were unaware of the ramifications that their actions might provoke.

In recent years, the garbage and pollution in these islands has skyrocketed. And unfortunately there is no good solution. It’s obviously not good to throw it in the ocean. It’s obviously not good to throw it on the ground. It’s obviously not good to throw it in the rivers. It’s obviously not good to burn it. So what do we do?

You might say, “dig a landfill”. Well that would be a feasible option, except that the combined landmass of these islands is about the size of an average American landfill. These islands are in Micronesia. “Micronesia” means “small islands”. It is almost impossible to put trash in landfills because there is simply no land for landfills. We have steep mountains, taro patches, houses, and beach. No space in between.

On my island of Fefan, we are still rather rural and do not have an overwhelming problem with trash. However, the main island of Weno is visibly suffering. The streets are covered in mud and garbage. Every alley way is littered with trash and refuse. There are no trash cans, no trash service, and very little sanitation service. The garbage is simply piling up in all the cracks and crevices of the island.

This week while I spent a few days on Weno, I got a shocking example of how bad the situation actually is. A ferocious rainstorm came ripping through our lagoon and let down torrents of rain. My friend Naavid and I were returning back to the home of a local woman to sleep for the night and we saw her struggling with a stick near a small stream beside her house. The stream had overflowed and was pouring onto her property.

We trudged through the muddy puddles and offered to help her fix the problem. We soon learned that the problem was far more serious than we could have ever imagined. The stream was no longer a stream. It was a large pool of disgusting water encased by a compacted mishmash of trash. We began poking away at the blockage of garbage and dislodging pieces so that they could flow downhill. Naavid got a pick axe and I used a long palm frond stick. We went to work on this blocked up section of the stream and began tearing out all kinds of crazy things. With our tools we scooped and pushed the garbage from along the sides and down on the bottom. Naavid would swing the pick ax down and it would submerge fully into what looked like solid rock or mud. As he pulled back, chunks of compacted garbage would loosen up and flow down the river. What we thought was dirt, rock, and plants was actually piles of garbage. We dug and we dug. We stood in the middle of the river and worked intensely for over an hour. At the end of our efforts, we had lowered the water level by about 3 feet. That means that were at least 3 feet of trash stuck in the river!

I am not a very skilled descriptive writer and I do not think that my words properly describe the insanity of the scene that we beheld on this stormy day. I had no idea that a stream could be so encrusted and engorged with trash. The water was not only bloated with garbage, but the banks and bottom were actually made of garbage. This pristine island stream had turned into a shit-hole.

We fixed a 50 yard section of the river that day, but we only fixed a small fraction of the river. And we only fixed a small fraction of the problem. Pollution is a really serious issue, especially on these islands. I always knew that littering wasn’t a good thing, but I had no idea of its gargantuan effects until I saw it on a magnified scale like this. America is so big that we have enough room to stuff our trash into places that we don’t have to see it. They don’t have that luxury in Chuuk. As more stuff comes in, more potential trash comes in…..and it never leaves.