Compromising Eden: part IV

One can track how well modernity and tourism are spreading by examining the streets and beaches of Indonesia for signs of plastic. In the more remote areas of the archipelago, people do not use plastic but instead rely on their traditional banana skin or palm leaf wrapping materials.

Therefore plastic can be used as a barometer in order to determine how far modernity and tourism have pushed into the fringe areas. These are usually very remote communities that fish and farm for a living and see no real need (or chance) to change a practical, local resource (natural wrapping) that will simply disintegrate in a few days or a week. They remain natural or "Edenesque" simply due to their remote location and despite societal pressure to become more "modern," their great distance from large population centers and the maintenance of their traditional diet is what keeps them from living outside of mainstream society, thus in a plastic free zone. Personally, I have not met a single traveler that has enthusiastically commented on the fact that they received their groceries in a plastic bag from a local grocery store, but I have met more than a few that told me how they purchased a tasty snack wrapped in a banana leaf from an old lady with betel nut stained teeth in a rickety bamboo shack that sits on the end of a beautiful beach on a little island that is located 500 miles away from the nearest Coke Machine. Plastic does not live in Eden!

Mike Hillis is a writer and an ethnologist living in Indonesia. He is also the Marketing Director of Unexplored Adventures, a diving and Eco Travel Company based in the Spice Islands of eastern Indonesia.