Green Business II

When I was a boy in Bogotá, I remember hearing a woman hollering “botellas, papel” (bottles, paper) on the street periodically. I can’t tell if it was once a month, once a week or more frequently. She was a recycler who bought glass bottles and old newspaper for a very low price to resell them to the recycling plants. That was her way to make a living, her business and the business of many other very poor people. Even then, Bogotá was a large and growing city requiring many, many of them to do the job. And these people didn’t have a motor vehicle. They walked through the streets dragging a wooden cart. Even the cart was environmentally friendly, as we say nowadays, for the wood was biodegradable, and the wheels were old ball bearings: they were reusing them. I never knew for certain how they carried the paper and the bottles all the way to the recycling plants, but I imagine several of them bringing the collected material to a street where a “zorrero” was waiting for them. I have to clarify that “zorrero” is the term we used in Bogotá to refer to a man who drives a “zorra”, literally a one-horsepower vehicle. A “zorra” was, in the Bogotano dialect, a large wooden cart drawn by a horse. Again, an environmentally friendly vehicle since the shafts, wheels and tires were all reused, and the wood was biodegradable. The horsepower was, of course, 100% organic and, when the moment came for the equine, 100% biodegradable as well.

The “zorras” shared the streets with the faster motor vehicles that had much, much more horsepower. As I said, I was a small boy and I don’t have a clear recollection of how heavy traffic was in the Bogotá of the beginnings of the 1960’s. But as the capital of the country, the city of opportunities for many Colombians, it grew very fast, becoming a large and diverse metropolis. Along came an amazing growth in the number of motor vehicles, which caught the planners, if they existed there and then, off guard. The infrastructure of the city became quite insufficient and, in an underdeveloped country, resources, especially money, are scarce. Streets and avenues maintenance and construction couldn’t cope with all that traffic. “Zorras” were on the streets along with cars, trucks, and buses, slowing down the flow of motor vehicles generating huge traffic jams and driving Bogotanos nuts. “Zorras” and cars were not sharing but competing unfairly for the scarce and inadequate street space. The recycling model was starting to be seen as an inconvenience.

Simultaneously, the television programming in the two channels - no satellite or cable TV then - was being inundated by what we called “enlatados” or in English “canned programs” coming from the United States. Everybody with a TV set at home was impressed by the prosperity and sophistication of the characters in those programs. Soon we would like to imitate that lifestyle. Visiting the United States was a dream for many of us. Since many couldn’t afford the trip we would have to feel satisfied with the stories and the souvenirs brought by those lucky ones that could take the jump. They spoke of many very tall skyscrapers, modern highways with tangled bridges where traffic flowed very fast and smoothly. They spoke of ice cream parlors, and restaurants where food wasn’t served to the table but the client brought it by him or herself to the table, or could take it directly to the car using the drive through window. Food was ready in a matter of minutes and everything was very hygienic, since food was placed on neat disposable boxes, dishes and cups. There were amazing machines where people would put coins in slots and get, without human intervention, cans of ice cold soft drink and many other goodies. And of course, the fortunate tourists brought, together with sophisticated battery-operated toys, some cans to drink Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola in front of us, just to show off.

We felt like we were living in the Stone Age, still using and reusing soda glass bottles, and going to restaurants where nothing was disposable, and on top of that, getting served took ages. Most of our cars were also very old; we were maintaining them too long and the new models they saw in the United States were fancier, more powerful and faster.

Even grocery shopping was a completely different experience. Americans would go to supermarkets where everything was neatly packed in plastic and polystyrene foam containers, and the store would provide as many plastic bags as needed to accommodate all the purchase.

How antiquated were we still using those rustic handmade baskets and going to the farmer’s market. Instead of plastic bags we were still using paper for packaging.

We needed to do something to get out of the underdevelopment and urgently. And so we did and have done ever since. We stopped reusing glass bottles and now we recycle all of them. The reason? Bottles eventually become brittle. My question is, nowadays, do glass bottles become brittle after the first use? Has anybody done any serious study about how many times on average can a bottle be reused before becoming brittle? Taking into account the environmental impact of reusing vs. recycling, wouldn’t it be more cost-effective and environmentally friendlier to test the bottles for brittleness and separate those that can be reused from those that need recycling? This sounds like a good environmental business compromise.

And Colombia along many other underdeveloped countries came into the era of sophisticated supermarkets where we could buy food neatly packaged and displayed in plastic and polystyrene foam packages, as well as canned goods: canned soft drinks, canned beer, canned food, etc. Farmer markets were gradually displaced by supermarkets. Of course, these supermarkets would provide plenty of plastic bags so that customers wouldn’t need to bring those ugly old baskets. They were a thing of our underdeveloped past; we needed to ride the train of development. We started to use plastic bags and disposing of them.

And the big chains of fast food restaurants started to pour in our cities. As our economy became more active our lifestyle had to follow that rhythm as well. We didn’t have any more the time to have lunch at home or to sit in a restaurant waiting to be helped and our food brought to our table. The solution was fast food restaurants for our ever more hectic life. Plus it was more hygienic: those colorful boxes and cups were disposable. Even on weekends it was fun to go to those restaurants because they had boxes for kids, which in addition to the food, included a collectable toy. A great catch for us kids, and we would beg to go back urgently to collect another toy.

I think that was the time we stopped calling ourselves underdeveloped country and jumped to the category of developing countries.