Chile Forum

I need your collective brainpower. What would you say are the key environmental issues that need to be addressed on a local level in Southern Chile? Ones that are realistic and take into account the socio-economic factors, the fact that people of necessity have more pressing priorities ... which when you get thinking about it is a bit tricky.

For example, burning wood for heat creating so much smog seems like a problem, but realistically there is wood everywhere; other sources of energy are expensive, houses don't tend to be well insulated, the estufa is the centre of the home... so maybe less wood needs to be burned but to address that there's a whole realm of bigger issues.

Decreasing the reliance on gas would be nice, but have you seen electricity prices in winter? I would love to see green energy generation instead of large multinational hydro projects too, but how, what's the motivation for companies to invest in this?

In Europe for example the sheer volume of "green" (even if they are light green) products that the individual or community can use has grown even in the last year - non toxic paints, non fibreglass insulation, solar panels, mini turbines - but I don't see these products coming to Chile. And have no idea if they could be made here. Or sold!

Or recycling, let's say, plastic bottles. I don't think there's much awareness of waste being an issue, as there's loads of space and not so many people.

Personally I'd start with not pumping raw sewerage into lake villarrica but even that would require commitment and investment. And requiring large companies that make money off the local community to invest in corporate social responsiblity (i know, buzzword of the 90s.)

Individually we can put money where mouth is on supporting local community, planting more (native) trees and stuff. But it all seems quite piecemeal sometimes.

So, especially as people that are largely escaping - well, the effects of people - what could we really, positively, in the real world, make an impact on in S Chile, help to make a better future - without being ignorant, patronising, etc?

Would love your thoughts on this. *Steps down off soapbox and removes tye-dye bandanna*

As I remember in the years I lived in Chiloe, garbage disposal was a big problem, every town in Chile has problem with trash and there are almost no enviromental approach to manage it. I guess that an enviromentally friendly plant to process trash may be useful, economically convenient for poor people (recycling) and is still feasible in small towns.

In Arica garbage is a big problem and if I would have the expertise and the money It would be my dreamed project

boy did you open up a can of worms near and dear to my heart.

I lived in Minnesota in the US until I was about 15. The first time the thought of clean air and clean water ever occurred to me was when I took a trip to L.A. when I was about 12. I stepped outside LAX airport and it was like the air was sucked from my lungs. Like you feel near a large intense fire. I had to run back in to the terminal's air conditioning before I pasted out. In MN we would take camping trips and drink water right out of the lake because it is all bogs, marshes, and trees. All commercial water filters really do is try to reproduce what the peat bogs of MN do so much better.

The story though that I tell everyone we that asks about why we are in southern Chile of all other places in the World, is a conversation I had in China with a friend of mine.

My wife and I spent a year teaching at a Chinese University in Nanjing. We were invited to dinner one night by another professor and his wife. The population of the city fo Nanjing is the same as all of Chile, and it is a small city by China standards.

After dinner me and my friend went for a walk around his apartment complex. A nice summer night in Nanjing, China. He stopped and looked up at the sky and said, "they tell me in the west you can see the stars". He told me he had never seen the stars in his life, and he was the same age as me. He had never swam in a river or lake also, because of the contamination. When you walk down the street, you are covered to your knees, and sometimes to your waist in toxic dust from the industrial pollution.

I think in 50 years, and hopefully a lot sooner we will look back at people that contributed to the environmental disaster for what they are, criminals committing crimes against humanity. We know better, and they know better. The George Bush's of the World will ultimately be remembered for their support of the oil and car industry and their stances against Global Warming, long after the war on terrorism is forgotten. We will be ashamed to tell our grandchildren that we drove a gas car. They will have the same standing as Hitler and the SS, and we will have the same standing as members of the Nazi party in history for our parts in it.

So, what battles are winnable in Chile? Sooner or later I think all of them. Unfortunately it may be too late.

The big battle to win is to convince people that there is big money to be made in saving the Environment. I am not a full believer in dog eat dog capitalism, because I believe that is simply short sightedness from a pure business / economic perspective.

If Chileans, and Chilean business can be convinced of the shear amount of money to be made in green energy and environmental friendly products, the problem will solve it self.

What Chile has that other countries do not have is a small well educated population with lots of resources. The literacy rate in Chile is higher than the US by far.

First tactics is that Chileans are cheap, and so is the rest of the World. If some company with the right marketing pushed it right, there is a fortune to be made in convincing Chileans to insulate their houses correctly. Every time I have spoken to a home seller in Chile, while looking at their house and asked if they had double pain windows and explained why I want to know, I have seen the light go on upstairs.

Second tactic, Shame. Chileans are embarrassed easily. I do not want to go as far as to say Chileans simply follow the heard, but I would say they also like to keep up with the Jones. If insulation is in fashion, then they Chileans will buy it. They just need Paris and Fallebela to sell it to them, or perhaps SODIMAC.

The battle that can be won for the environment in Chile are educational and economic. We often thing of things like green enenergy, or energy conservation as requiring real high tech or expensive technologies. In Chile, the low tech has for the most part not yet been implemented because people don't know to do it.

I bet with sustained educational campaign, along with the right economic and business pressures (politicians are the last to follow), Chile could cut its energy consumption in half and eliminate a lot of the problems like the proposed dam projects, the amount of wood that is used by each house, and the pollution that goes with it.

I have also seen the advertising at city hall in Villarrica pushing the wonders of wood as a renewable energy source. I simply could not believe the city was actively advertising wood as a heating solution with an entire wall of nice posters.

Much more to come on this subject.

My original country NZ has so many geo similarities to Chile but as it is wealthier, trendier etc and knows it relies on tourism and its clean green image is really into the green products (though they have almost no forest left and even our national symbol is endangered, oh yes and then there is the GM, but don't get me started). A really simple example is sheep wool insulation. It's magic. There is no reason Chile can't make it, except that no one has... that's just one example. Quality windows - where would you get them in sthn Chile? Etc etc

There are companies in Chile that produce the expensive, super vacuum sealed, thermal double or triple pained windows. They are expensive relative to regular homemade or factory made single pain frame windows that most houses have in Chile.

On a practical implementation level just to get people to use two pains of glass (one stays warm, one stays cold) would likely cut the energy usage of any given Chilean house by 20-30 percent. Chileans do seem to like big windows, but they are almost always single pained. Adding a second pain is not that expensive or hard, because the real cost is in the installation and frame of making any window. a 1/4 inch or less space between pains is easy to add.

The warmest hostels and hotels we have stayed in Chile have always been built by Germans or foreigners using double pained windows, or even the more expensive thermal pained windows.

Even beyond the windows, adding thicker curtains. Often when we enter houses that are cold in Chile, their curtains are so thin that the heat passes through.

Yea, things you learn growing up in MN. If your house goes cold in MN, your life is in danger (like -40 or more danger).

I would add to big ones in construction besides windows and insulation, is also roofs. Better roofs. Tin roofs are cheap, but they do not conserve energy.

There is also a plain stupid factor to deal with. We have been in poor peoples houses in Chile that are constantly feeding wood in to the the fire, but you can see daylight through the wall and feel the breeze flowing in to the house.

That one I simply don't know what to do about. Because it does not fall under an education or economic issue thing. If falls under shear lazy or stupid category. They can't work out how to borrow a hammer and find a scrap piece of wood to cover the hole in the wall. They have complete access to the resources to fix the problem, but will spend half the day splitting wood rather than 5 mins covering a hole. I can not even count the number of times I have seen this one.

It is not just poor people. There are plenty of examples that scale up in economics. There are plenty of rich people that will complain about the price of heating their home, but will not have thermal windows put in even if they know they exist and all about the benefits.

The root source of a lot of environmental issues lies of course with the companies. Take Tombrad's example of recycling - the factories that produce wasteful packaging, and the supermarkets for example that sell it, are really responsible for it but it's the end user who needs to deal with the consequences, which of course requires investment and education. And I get the impression that companies looking to profit in Chile are bringing their bad habits with them as they can still "get away with it" here. Still, recycling must be one of the easier ones at least with some products to change as they do have a value still... if there is a business around that will process them...

Plastic bags. There is no imperative for supermarkets etc here to cut down on plastic bags; I always get looked at strangely when I don't use a bag or two for example to buy a lemon. I'm often wrestling with the bewildered checkout boys who are trying to get as many bags as possible wrapped around my groceries for maximum tip, and I'm just as quickly unpacking and repacking... (I hate the fact they don't get paid by the companies, by the way, despite being given their uniforms)...

This organisational greed would also be the case with energy generation no? Big f-off dams in Patagonia for massive hydro schemes, rather than mini-hydro constructions...

Solutions, solutions? So far the tourist dollar seems the best motivation - as in, you don't have to agree or understand why, but S Chile will make more tourism money if we do this enviro thing...

Strange, one of my most vivid memories of returning to Chile for the first time, about 30 years ago, as an adult was the markets in Santiago. To my knowledge there were no large markets like Jumbo or Lider. I stayed with my uncle in La Reina, and we would go to the market often with bottles and jars and bags. We needed bottles to fill with oil from large containers . many item were sold loose or in thin plastic bags, but few boxes.In the south we even took our own bottles , we had a huge demijohn, to be filled with wine from casks, at the locl little market. My aunt thought it very amusing that gringos could buy things like dog food prepackaged, she made her own.
ten years later there were 2 jumbos within a short distance from his house with about 50 checkout counters and everyone of them manned. Huge markets bigger than any i had seen in Pennsylvania or Maine where i spent time. Everthing imaginable in can,jars,boxes etc. Things have changed!

Any more?

What it boil down to is to find ways for people to understand that if they spend wisely the amount X now (say the price of double pane windows to take Charles' example), they'll save X by a factor of ten over their lifetime. Where things get more complex is that externalities are not always internalized, meaning those who pollute don't always bear the costs. If you can get people to think just a little less in the short term then they start doing something about energy efficiency or recycling. Hopefully as more people like Charles spread best practices in construction the word will spread. Lobbying for tax breaks on energy-efficient designs may be an idea.

In Portugal for instance they seldom put gutters on houses. They'll tell you that it never rains in Portugal, so why bother. Of course it rains sometimes, you dimwit, and when it does most housing in the country are very humid and cold in the winter. Then they spend a fortune in heating, get sick and so on. Never saw people so short-sighted and in denial of plain reality. It looks like the complacency is a factor of having nice weather most of the time. When it comes to people just being stupid and lazy, as Charles said I'm at a loss about what to do about it.

To get back to the OP's question, are property rights properly enforced in Southern Chile? I've found that in some places, pollution gets worse because people dump garbage on their neighbor's doorstep or by the road side and no one does anything about it. Property is a good way to get people to care. I tend to think that air and water end up so polluted because no one and everyone owns it (not that there's an easy answer to air pollution through property rights!). Dumping things on the side of the road will get you a big fine in may states in the US, and it's enforced. Nothing of the sort in Portugal. I could collect more garbage in a 500 yard perimeter around my house in Portugal than by driving 200 miles in the semi-rural US.

Here in Florida, Publix the largest grocery store in the state has ad's on TV how all their fruit comes from beautiful Chile and it shows some farm land etc. Would be nice if Publix asked some of these questions of the companies that they deal with in Chile, but whats in it for them?

It really needs to be an idea that Chile has and come from within. Is it possible that at some point that the shear embarassment of having such a beautiful country that still pumps raw sewage into their lakes and streams starts the change. Money is the prime motivator in most things, so when you can either save money or make money or shame them into change it will happen.

Just getting people to not just throw things out the car window isn't easy either but when caught and fined $200. it tends to get around not to do it ,as an example.

>Money is the prime motivator in most things, so when you can either save money or make money or shame them into change it will happen.

I know I pay a fee when I buy a bottle of Coca-Cola that can be returned in Chile, but I don't recall that I pay anything extra when it cannot be returned. Given the volume of soft drinks sold, plus beer, etc. perhaps a bottle deposit like they have in Oregon or California might work.

The costs is minimal, $.05 I believe per can or bottle, but here it is often used as a donation for Habitat for Humanity. I'd think in Chile a little economic incentive would allow those to toss or donate who want to, while allowing for others to gather them up as income - Not a statement on our beliefs, just letting market forces do the work and once the incentive is in place, the volume would make recycling more viable.

Stateside we built an energy-star designed/tested/certified home, low-water landscaping, composter, etc. and the house is solar-powered (also tied to grid for evenings, but the meter does spin backwards during the day). We had to hunt for a crew to install the solar panels, and the market is still small for alternative energies even here. We're finding it much harder to find similar options in SoChile.

Here's a punchline - sometimes tech solutions to consumption backfire (pun intended). Our 2004 Toyota Prius (Hybrid; Electric/Gasoline Powered) is dead in the driveway. Apparently a small battery in the system can die and completely disable the entire vehicle.

Solution? AAA road tow (Diesel perhaps, but dirty) to the dealer, replace the battery (will they recycle it?), and wonder if it will happen again. So I'll ride my bicycle to work and tell my wife where the keys to my mid 70's Datsun are hanging if she needs them.

A couple of weeks ago a guy from Santiago appeared proposing to me to use some extra space in an storage area I rent to collect and chip plastic bottles, he told me that he eas a customer in Denamark and intend to export there.

I make the maths in my mind and their numbers simply didnt match so, suspecting some rare situation I said "no thanks". Few days later appeared in the news a big contraband of cocaine from Peru to Europe mixed into plastic chips, thats the reason of high prices!!

So, my 1 cent advice today: beware on business too good to be true, specially if they involve plastic recycling

Watched some recycling in Valdivia a couple of years ago.
Lady carried out to the roadside a full black plastic rubbish sack.
Emptied the contents into the gutter and carried the bag back inside.
Recycling!!!!!!!!

Interesting thread, and I had a quiet giggle when I read the posts about preferring to spend all day chopping wood to 5 minutes repairing a hole in the wall. I've seen it all too, and I also cannot understand it.

Recycling takes a major effort, as I saw in Ireland. When I left Ireland it was about as environmentally aware as Chile is now. Open site dumps, rubbish by the side of the road, free plastic bags for shopping, you get the idea. When I moved to Germany, I got hit by a cultural shock. In the supermarket, I spent all this money buying my groceries, and now you say I have to pay you for a plastic bag so I can take them home !? Bloody hell!

In fairness, I do see some effort to recycle things like glass and plastic bottles, cans, paper here in Santiago. It doesn't look very nice to see someone rooting around in the rubbish bins outside our building for these things, but I guess it works. I know quite a few people who collect beer cans and especially the tabs to sell back to the drinks companies.

But awareness of saving energy is absolutely zero. Not only is there almost no double glazing to be seen, but the windows I've seen (like where we live) are the sliding type, and there is no proper sealing where they meet. The walls have no insulation, the lights are on in the corridor all day every day. Some twit designed the floor heating into the ceiling, so I guess if you're 2m tall or more, you get to have a warm head, but very cold feet.

One problem is that the return on saving energy comes over a relatively long time. Solar heating cells, for example, pay for themselves over 15 years or so. So places which save lots of energy have government incentives to encourage this. And they do this both directly through tax incentives and through banks offering what are in effect special-purpose mortgages for these things. And they require the power companies to buy power from consumers who can generate more than they need.

Until this is available in Chile then energy saving is going nowhere. The government handed out energy-saving bulbs to poor people this winter, but if this is all they're going to do, then forget it. Charles, if you've still got the ear of your senator, you might mention this, as the Chilean economy is going to be strangled if there's another winter like the last one (no gas...).

here is an article in Spanish that was passed along by a member of the Aguas Libres environmental group in Futaleufu. It is an article about the top 35 environmental threats in Chile.

http://www.lasegunda.com/detalle_impreso/index.asp?idnoticia=0221092007301S0460052