BOLIVIA—Judging by the smell of the ancient dump miles away, CESO volunteer Bill Goodings suspected that he would face a tough job. You weren’t supposed to smell a dump from that distance.
When the 80-year-old, retired civil engineer arrived at the massive garbage site outside of San Borja, Bolivia, he was met with a surreal sight. He saw children and adults scavenging the rodent-filled debris for aluminum, steel and anything they could sell. High levels of toxic gas, insects and rodents were dangerous for the local community and those who worked with the garbage.
Goodings’ partner, a Bolivian municipal official, turned to him and asked, “Bill, what can we do about this?” With only a couple of weeks and practically no budget, a less-experienced expert might have wilted, but Goodings had tackled countless smelly garbage heaps during his career. “We’ll turn these into compost piles,” he suggested.
After interviewing village residents Goodings discovered that 90 per cent of the dump’s waste was organic, unlike dumps in Canada, which contain much more materials like plastic and metal that aren’t bio-degradable.
Goodings is a founding member of the Composting Council of Canada and had experimented with composting methods during his first CESO assignment in the Philippines. Alongside partners he loosely piled the garbage into long rows about six feet high so that it could ventilate. Then they covered piles with six-inch layers of rice hulls that they had gotten for free from nearby factories, to keep animals out of the waste.
To their amazement the internal temperature of the garbage rose on the first day, eventually reaching 55 degrees Celsius, and perfect for oxygen-loving bacteria to thrive and begin natural composting. Soon the temperature caused flies and larvae to die off, rodents to vacate and the rotten garbage odor to disappear. In six months the pile transformed into mature black compost that could be added to gardens once the non-recyclable matter was filtered out.
Goodings continued employing the compost methodology in many global communities and found satisfaction improving municipal dumps and solid-waste systems.
“The communities share with me, as I share with them,” says Goodings. “We humbly learn about the wonderful and different heritages and cultures in which we find ourselves, and for me, that often begins with finding myself right in the middle of a smelly garbage dump.”