We know where every bit & bite of our garbage goes. Do you?
Do you know what happens to your garbage? We know what happens to every bit and bite, scrap and strip of ours!
Besides being off the grid (solar electricity) and growing 2 hectare of organic fruits and veggies, Bali Silent Retreat makes garbage a daily conversation, right down to “Ibu just said, ‘ no salary today until all the rubbish is picked up in the parkir. Let’s get going. Can we train Buster to fetch rubbish? Ha, ha!” Buster is the big yellow Lab who mostly sleeps on the veranda at the little security joglo. So there we go picking up little bits of plastic candy wrappers from the village kids, an abandon rubber sandal, some wood scraps, a bit of iron, a cardboard box, and half a roof tile.
The plastic and sandal will be picked up here at Bali Silent Retreat and taken to a recycling program (started 9 months ago by local Balinese) in Penatahan Village near Batu Karu TEMPLE.
The wood scraps will join the compost, along with all the kitchen veggies and non ink papers. We have a garden-totable organic buffet all day with fresh baked bread at 7am and 10 am.
The iron will get tossed into the iron box in the staff’s Project shed (recycled wood, of course), where they make banana leaf drinking cups, repair LED lights, and roll dirt balls around the vegetable bibbits. Eventually the iron gets picked up by the local ‘iron man’, who is not a marathon runner, for sure, but collects iron, glass, and assorted other recyclables, and we’re grateful.
The cardboard goes to the worm farm , which is mostly used to collect the worm pee to spray on the orchids, because all the garden beds have abundant worms . . . must be the cow manure that gets carried in on motor bikes each Thursday (poopook day).
The roof tile will get broken up a bit more and added to a ‘got’, which is a water channel that intentionally moves water in a specific direction, which is important for our philosophy to let the water move ; not block it.
Everything discarded has a specific place to go. Even the oil from the kitchen grease trap has its destination . . . the pigs in the village.
We are so over-the-top eco :
- off the grid; solar electricity in all sort of forms from flashlights & desk lamps to our well pump
- no chemicals of any kind,
- organic veggies picked fresh daily
- rainwater for washing veggies
- Balinese philosophy of Tri Hita Karana fully embraced
Worms love to eat cardboard and produce great liquid for spraying on orchids.
Oil from the kitchen grease trap is off to the little piggies in the village.
This video shows the real trashy problem that threatens Bali. What’s the real situation and what’s the possible solution?
