Chile Forum

RuneTheChookcha wrote:. . . . But now.. people fill their head with all kinds of plastic for some reason. . . .

Ah, buying melamine-laden ingestibles from China, perhaps?

At my daughter's (private, expensive) school they're teaching kids to not litter and recycle, but there's a definitely huge public education (and coercion, if you ask me) push needed in this country. Researchers in the Netherlands recently experimented to test the "broken windows" theory and found that littering and graffiti did lead to theft and other delinquent behavior.

Looking at Piñera's website (one of the main candidates for next year's presidential election), his environmental concerns seem rather limited. Individual behavior has a lot to do with it, and littering usually ends up in rivers and the ocean, which is a pretty nasty polluting cycle. Extra police jobs paid to fine people for littering would more than pay for themselves. Heavy fines had a lot to do with reducing littering in the US or Germany.

I can only speak for the US but they had a huge litter problem before the Keep America Beautiful stuff took hold-seems like that was the early 60s but continued for maybe 10 years before it really made a difference in people's behavior. I remember car trips as a kid and people regularly threw garbage out alongside the highways. Of course part of it was regulations, littering fines etc. Teaching the kids so they grow up thinking differently really changes the way parents think-the parents and grandparents are embarrassed when the kid says "but shouldn't we find a trash can?"

Here in La Serena the IESA group found a private recycling company to come pick up recyclables once a month (two actually, since we changed recently). So group members and friends drop off all our recycling in someone's driveway once a month and then the company comes and takes it away, and the group makes a little money for their charitable projects.

IS IESA still active? There website hasn't been updated since August?

IESA is on hold for the summer like everything else; the website hasn't been updated because the person maintaining it had a baby around that time. But yes, meetings will start up again in March.

For those of you which look for a way to recycle in Santiago, there are some good user-created maps on GoogleMaps about it. Since I can´t yet post the link, I need zou toopen Google (dot com) and search for "quiero reciclar sitios publicos donde se puede reciclar latas santiago". It should be the first search result.

Maybe somebody can post the link when after running a Google search.

We do. (Where's my gold star?) We also make compost and use reusable calico bags (now also for sale at Lider & Jumbo these days) that we brought with us from Oz. There are recycle collection bins scattered all around Las Condes & Vitacura. We use the bins in the underground car park at Portal La Dehesa. From what I understand, charity organisations collect the bottles/cans/plastic and sell it to recycling plants, or something like that...

And here is the recycling link for Santiago:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&pt ... 34ffb71308

Thanks very much / Danke schön

There is a recycling area in Vitacura...where Santa Maria meets Vespucio. It's a small park called Punto Limpio, and there you will find very large containers for everything from magazines to electronics. I've seen people take loads of things there. A lot of people who save up their newspapers/magazines/glass or plastic bottles, take them there.
There are even people who work there during some hours to make sure things are recycled into their correct groups.

Thanks for that tip, Heather, I have a few non-working electronic items I need to get rid of and didn't know what I should do with them.