Littered with rhetoric

“The devil flies in plastic bags.” “Real men pick up trash.” In the Middle East, messages about cleaning up the environment take on many shapes and forms. It looks as though exasperated foreigners who have wandered the streets looking for a trash bin may be in luck. Governments and civil society groups alike are going out of their way to clean up and cultivate a new environmental ethic in children.

The UAE, Egypt, Kuwait, and Jordan have developed websites and interactive software that preach the importance of recycling, conservation, and putting trash in its place. Egypt’s Ministry for Environmental Affairs, for example, created a website for children that connects environmental issues with those of personal health and safety. Several groups in Yemen and the UAE have even taken a more religious approach reminding youngsters that cleanliness is next to godliness.

As ecotourism in the region has begun to catch on (66,000 ecotourists visited Jordan in 2008), regional governments have realized that garbage-littered highways and streets are a kill-joy for tourists making their way to nature preserves. Thousands of trash bins and volunteers alike have been dispatched, in hopes of attaining the double goals of building a sense of community and national pride. The eco-friendly, economic, and religious reasons for protecting the environment have found a new junction in the region.

Regardless of the rhetoric used to promote this message, there seems to be a new wave of environmental initiatives for the Middle East and that children are malleable targets of this message. Amidst these winds of change, it may just be that the national bird of Jordan, Syria and Egypt - the plastic bag- will eventually lose its wings.

- Lindsey Stephenson and Christie Bahna