THE "NIMBY" SYNDROME

SOMETHING SMELLS!

By Agnes T. Jalandoni

 

In his book, The Laws of Nature and other Stories, Antonio Oposa,Jr. describes the ‘Nimby’ Syndrome . “The entire waste problem is really a simple problem of attitude. We like to throw things away, yet we expect others to accept our garbage.  In Spanish, there is an elegant term for this.  It is called sin verguenza.  One is hard put to find a term for it in English, the closest being the word, ‘shameless’; in Filipino, however, the sound of the word closely imitates the meaning. The word is ‘bastos’. “

I was intrigued.  Words are powerful aren’t they?  In Spanish it is elegant, in English, objective and in Filipino, well, it hurts.  He continues, “Even assuming that all the volume of waste is actually collected, (an impossible assumption especially in economically disadvantaged countries), the garbage still ends up a problem: there is nowhere to put them in.  Everybody wants to throw garbage away.  However, since one of the laws of ecology states that everything has to go somewhere, the garbage that we throw away will always have to end up In someone else’s backyard.  This has given rise to the “not-in-my-backyard” (or NIMBY) SYNDROME.  Everyone wants to throw away his garbage, but no one wants to accept garbage in his backyard. “  BULLSEYE!

In the year since we started our work in the Anti BAHA campaign, I have seen this syndrome in the poorest slums and also, in the manicured sidewalks of secured subdivisions.  In one of our monitoring videos a clip of a yellow plastic bag was caught being hurled from the window of a shanty to the creek below. We were mortified to find out that this was actual footage of a disposable toilet practice. In the yellow bag was human feces.  Don’t ask me how we found out.  No toilet?  Do  it in the plastic bag and hurl it as far as you can in the hope that the creek takes it downstream – hard realities of living in the slums. The problem is downstream… who gets the ‘s_ _t’ in the yellow plastic bag.

It’s peculiar how the NIMBY syndrome manifests itself in the upscale subdivisions here in our city. Notice how some garbage cans are strategically located - as far away from the gate of the carefully manicured sidewalk surrounding the residences?  The contents of these bins is another topic altogether but many are overflowing to the max.  Take it all away. I’ll pay you. Just make sure it’s thrown far, far, away.

We know this to be true. Perhaps, we are guilty ourselves. “ The NIMBY attitude is an offshoot of the  ‘throw – away’ or ‘disposable’  syndrome.  Things are used and then thrown away.  We like to buy things from the store, use parts of them and then throw away a larger part of these items.”  Hence, the huge waste that we generate.  

We have to stop and look at what we throw away.  Then, we must ask ourselves, where do all the things we throw go?  Whose backyard does it all end up anyway?

The floods that have hit our city have shown that in some prophetic way, what comes goes around, and ends up where it began.  Right in one’s backyard.  Ah, so you found the yellow plastic bag?