How much does a plastic shopping bag weigh? No, really, I need to know. Half a gram? One gram? Let's er on the side of generosity and say a plastic shopping bag weighs one whole gram. That means, you would need to collect one thousand plastic bags to end up with one kilo. OneTHOUSAND bags!!! Now imagine that you have to collect these one thousand platic bags by digging through large piles of filthy garbage. Now, for the 'icing on the cake', imagine that you are paid LESS than 3 cents for your 1000 bags!!! Would you do it? Of COURSE NOT!!! Well today, I met a whole village of people, children included, that have no choice. This is what they HAVE to do to make enough money to feed themselves.
These people not only work at the dump digging through the garbage, they LIVE at the dump, right in amongst all the piles of stinking rubbish.
To put their plight in a different light: one 40kg bag of rice, which will feed a family of 4 for one month, costs $25. That means, in order for the family to raise enough money to buy rice to last them one month, they need to collect ONE MILLION plastic shopping bags!!! They have to do this every month, day after day, digging through the garbage of Siem Reap.
We need to be outraged!!! Better yet, we need to do all that we can to help people who are forced to live like this. We that 'have,' have a moral obligation to help the people of this world that 'have not'. Please sponsor a child/ family through an NGO that you trust. It might just be a drop in the bucket, but just imagine what a difference it could make to a child that, as we speak, is curling up in a ramshackle bamboo hut having spent the day trying to put a dent in their million bags a month goal.