OK, so the week is young, but here’s my favourite story so far, which I picked up from Craig McGinty’s “This French Life” website, which always features a number of diverse and informative articles.
The people of the cutely-named town of Mopti in Mali, following the lead of their neighbours in Niger, have found a practical use for the thousands of tons of discarded plastic bags littering their town. Through a relatively simple process of mixing the bags with sand and melting them down in a furnace, the mixture is turned into paving stones. Now, how clever is that? And how particularly encouraging to know that it is Africa which has come up with what seems to be a solution to one of the major ecological problems facing the Western world.
Oddly enough, I’ve been there. I spent quite a bit of time in that part of the world during my tenure in the oil industry. There are definately worse places, and, to be honest, I don’t recall it being particularly overwhelmed with plastic bags.
But I wasn’t looking particularly.
By: Jon in France on September 3, 2008
at 10:36 pm
But did you notice the paving stones?
By: merewoman on September 4, 2008
at 7:15 pm
You know, I’m not sure there were any. Most towns in that part of the world are characterised by vast quantities of dust, rather than paved roads.
Perhaps the slabs are under the sand?
By: Jon in France on September 8, 2008
at 10:45 pm