Saturday, October 04, 2008

Welcome to Paradise

Well, it's official. As of this past week, I signed on as a consultant at my company and my first project will be later this month. We are doing a project on waste minimization and recycling on the Fiji Islands. (Official gov't news release here)

Obviously, I'm just a little bit happy about the fact that the project is in a tropical location. That said, we will be spending time trying to convince people living on a tropical island why it's important to recycle and compost. It's hard enough to convince someone in an office setting to make double-sided copies at the push of a button. So I realize it's going to be a real challenge to somehow tempt people away from the beach; to get out of the hammock, slip on the flip-flops and dump tea leaves in a compost pile. Well, actually, public relations is part of the work, but the main focus is a pilot project in the Lautoka Vunato dump site. How many people can say they spent a few weeks in the waste dump of paradise?
But, funny enough, I was thinking back to the first real assignment I had as an editor at my company and a blog post I wrote about it in February 2007 (here) titled, "Anyone ever considered living in a small Micronesian nation?" I was editing a report on Fiji, Samoa, Palau and the Marshall Islands that had to do with bulky waste, like auto chassis and refrigerators, and asked the question: "What happens to a broken fridge in Fiji?" Well, I guess I'm about to find out--I just hope it's not my fridge.