BENGARLAND!com

I’ve had this damn Toto song, “Hold The Line”, in my head for days since hearing it on the bus on Saturday. The sad part is that it was one of the few good songs I heard the entire time. For some reason the radio stations here like to play the same 5 shitty pop songs over and over and over again. I guess they do that in the States too, but I’d rather be subjected to listening to Pink a few times a day than tortured by the terrible shit they have down here. Ugh. Somebody needs to import some variety.

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I have only 4 more weeks left here at EARTH. In some ways I’m glad the time is coming to a close… my only real regret is that I can’t take some of my friends back home with me. I have met some truly amazing people here and it is going to be sad to have to say goodbye.

EARTH is an interesting place. They sell the picture of sustainability, but there is a lot here that is not sustainable at all. And in general the campus is permeated with a lot of bad attitudes, primarily among the students but also staff as well. Despite that it is supposedly hard to get accepted here and there is a selection process, many of the students are some of the most apathetic, mindless individuals I have ever met who seem to really care nothing for the environment. One of the students here, for whom I have much respect, told me that she wouldn’t be surprised if only 10% of the graduates actually go on to do something important after they graduate. I think this is an under-exaggerration but it does illustrate the point.

Just last week, when I was at La Flor (EARTH’s recently-acquired new farm) on the Pacific side of the country, we were served lunch in styrofoam to-go boxes (with a top and bottom part hinged together). I couldn’t believe they were using styrofoam, especially to-go boxes which have double the amount of waste. So I started a trend to cut (separate) the top and bottom portions and make two bottom parts from them. This way we could at least halve the amount of trash. Other students seemed to pick up on it, and I think we saved about 20 containers. However I was surprised that the other 60 people who went through the line before me made no effort whatsoever to reduce the amount of trash — especially since it was styrofoam, the worst offender!

And then, after lunch, there were no separate trash bags provided to separate the “paper”, “plastic”, and “other” materials for recycling. Actually there were, but they were about 50 feet away from where we were eating. Apparently whoever organized this thing thought we were all too lazy to walk over to the recycling bins to dispose of our trash properly, so they provided single trash bags in the dining area.

One of my friends suggested I talk to the guy who runs the farm, as he was standing right in front of us in the dessert line, and ask him about all of this. I was polite, but curious, about the use of styrofoam and not separating the recyclables. His answer was basically this:

I’m the only one running this place. Just me and my secretary. We don’t have any other administration to organize things right now. And the president of Costa Rica is coming here in 15 days, so that is our priority — not dealing with the trash.”

My friend and I were floored. Here is a guy who is working for EARTH University, which promotes sustainability and eco-consciousness — and he’s too fucking lazy to pick up paper plates instead of styrofoam, and he can’t tell everyone to use the pre-existing recycle bins for their trash, instead providing normal trashbags for everything? What the fuck?

Now I guess some of the blame for the trash should fall on the students as well, who put everything in the same place when the recycle bins were in plain view just 50 feet away. But still, it was disappointing.

How does EARTH expect these students to go back to their communties after graduation and care about recycling, re-use, and proper trash disposal when they don’t lead by example?