Recycling

Ecuador does not have cheap clothes and toys such as are available in shops like Primark and Tesco in Britain. Clothes are relatively expensive and making your own is still cheaper than anything you can buy ready made. Cheap toys are terrible quality - they would not pass safety standard test in the UK and often break in the first day or two. Toys of any quality cost money. Therefore I should not have been surprised that when I threw out my underwear as now too worn out for me to wear, I later saw it hanging on my neighbour´s washing line. Here people really do use things, mend things, and use them again, until they are completely destroyed.

Recycling is a way of making money. I walk past a large school on my way to check the PO box at the post office each week. Outside, they leave large sacks full of rubbish. Often, there is a little old woman sifting through the bags, hunting for anything that could be recycled that she can put in her cart. She takes these items to the recycling yard, they buy the items from her, and this is how she earns her living. 

Woman with recycling she has collected on her back at the recycling yard 

When I visit homes in Ecuador they are not full of clutter. People simply do not have many things. It certainly makes me stop and think before I purchase more and more. It makes me mend and reuse and recycle. It causes me to give things I no longer need to others who can use them, instead of throwing them in the bin. 
It makes me so thankful that I do not have to rummage through rubbish to make ends meet. It challenges me to hold on to less and be more generous with what I have.After all, "The earth is the Lord´s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it." Psalm 24 v 1. I should be sharing all that God has gracious given me with others.