This month we’re expanding our coverage beyond the Nosara landfill to include news of how other places are coping with trash.

The annual International Coastal Cleanup will be held Saturday, September 17. Last year 800,000 volunteers worldwide collected more that 18 million pounds of trash during the cleanup. In Costa Rica, 552 volunteers cleaned up 32,543 pieces of waste, adding up to 5,036 kg along 17 km of coastline. The event is sponsored by Ocean Conservancy.

Farther in the future, Let’s Do It! is organizing a world cleanup day on September 8, 2018. Let’s Do It! is a civic organization begun six years ago in Estonia, where 50,000 people cleaned up all illegally dumped waste in their country in five hours. Estonia is slightly smaller than Costa Rica, with a third of its population.

Since then, this model—one country in one day—has spread around the world. You can download a mobile app from their site to record and transmit locations where waste is being dumped. To date, 113 countries and over 15 million people have cleaned up more than 500,000 tons of waste. The campaign aims to involve 150 countries by 2018. For more information: www.letsdoitworld.org

Other countries are finding enterprising ways to reuse plastic. The Indian government has made it mandatory to incorporate plastic waste in new urban roads and is encouraging its use in rural roads. Cities can sell their plastic waste to road developers, who can expect the price per km of road building to drop. Plastic will make roads resistant to water and changes in weather.

Are you listening, MOPT?
Government makes use of plastic waste in road construction mandatory

Meanwhile, Bangladeshis are making very low-tech air conditioners, using only pegboard and plastic bottles to cool hot spaces. Who knows, this practice could spread to other tropical places with plentiful sources of used plastic. Perhaps even Nosara.

How Bangladeshi inventors are making eco-friendly air conditioners from plastic bottles