Where there's Smoke, there's Garbage

Not so many years ago, 80 or 90 percent of the rubbish created in Ghana was organic.  That is to say, most of people's trash was food, or wood, or stuff that comes straight out of the ground.  And the best way to ensure no one and nothing else could get to it was to burn it.

Now, unknown masses of garbage are made up of plastic, metal, glass... but the tradition of burning still stands.

back there, in the corner!

Our neighbors in front and behind burn weekly, if not more often.

You can tell immediately because there's a thick white smoke in the air which smells sickly sweet.  You just know chemicals are leaching out into the air.  In front of our house a few weeks ago, they tried to burn leftover PVC pipes... with little success.  It may be the most space-efficient way to dispose of your waste, but nowadays, it's pretty scary what people are doing with heat and plastic.

Even street food is always dumped into two or three layers of plastic bags.  We know that heat + plastic = bad combination, right?  But what can you do, short of bringing your own Tupperware everywhere you go?