Reduce > Reuse > Recycle

In the States the environmental movement is founded on the basic belief that it’s the responsible thing to take care of the planet; that we’re using up the earth’s natural resources and will have no future if we continue this way. From afar, we’ve heard a lot of talk about the “Al Gore documentary,” or AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Needless to say, it hasn’t made it to Marrakech just yet.

In Marrakech, and indeed throughout Morocco, there’s a great deal of environmentally friendly behavior, and though the motives are quite different, the net result is in many ways positive. The three Rs of environmentalism - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - are very much in evidence here, though the motivation is primarily a financial one.



The first thing we noticed was how little electricity is used. While looking at close to a hundred houses between Fez and Marrakech, we were struck by how stridently people conserved electricity. A light would be turned on in each room, and tuned off the moment we left, both conserving electricity and helping to keep the rooms cooler in the hot summer. Almost without exception fluorescent light bulbs are used because of their energy efficiency. Fluorescent is an aesthetic concession, though; we’ve had dinner in high-end restaurants where we asked them to turn off the harsh green glare, leaving us in near-dark candlelight. The pervasive American habit of turning all the lights on and leaving them on (not to mention TVs, stereos, air conditioners, etc.) is completely foreign here. Scooters are a popular alternative to cars: in addition to being dramatically cheaper, they’re cherished for their fuel economy.



We’ve also been struck by how much less garbage Moroccans generate than Americans. This garbage can is the product of a street full houses for a week. Garbage bags hardly exist in the stores; people reuse grocery bags. And even the garbage that accumulates is subjected to a form of local recycling. It’s common for garbage bags to be torn into and scavenged for useful things. And the men who drive the donkey carts will frequently find any organic material - watermelon rinds, for example – and feed it to their beasts. And since all the garbage bags are torn open before they’re carted away, we’ve had ample opportunity to observe that there is no junk mail. There is no evidence of the vast, vast quantities of paper – paper towels, paper napkins, computer paper, newspapers, catalogs – that we are accustomed to throwing out in the States.

Repair shops proliferate for any item imaginable. Scooter repair shops can be found on virtually every block. Someone will patiently tinker on an old industrial engine indefinitely. The idea of repairing most electronics in the States is a bit of a joke. Why spend $80 to repair something when you can buy a new one for $100? And so the garbage dumps and landfills continue to expand. In Morocco, the cost of skilled labor to repair is much cheaper, and since a savings of $20 amounts to about two day’s wages, demand for repair stores keeps even VHS Camcorders in use.



Of course, there are problems. Water use is very high. The standard cleaning practice for tile floors is to pour bucket after bucket of water on the floor and then squeegee the water across the tiles and into drainpipes. And there’s an odd habit that shopkeepers have of watering down the sidewalk in front of their little stores. It’s meant to keep down the dust and make the area a bit cooler, but we sat in one café that watered down its sidewalk five times in as long as it took us to drink an orange juice.

In addition to water, there is no recycling in the American sense. All the plastic water bottles we drain daily are thrown out with eggs shells and stale bread. And while we’ve seen plenty of creative uses for water bottles on our construction site, the two of us alone generate more than is needed for all of Marrakech’s construction sites. So while Morocco has a lot to learn about recycling from the West, the West could learn a great deal from Morocco’s frugal approach to its refuse. And speaking of stale bread, we’ve discovered that the heels of our day-old baguettes make for an excellent bread pudding. Maybe we’ll share the recipe and get the neighborhood recycling its bread come cooler weather.