No Waste

In Cuba, where an economic depression deepens, people have come up with creative ways to use discarded items. Nothing is wasted. This is a truth Jeremiah learned when he made a visit to the potter’s house.

Recycling.

We do it with newspapers, bottles and cans. Sometimes with old batteries and computer printer cartridges. But how about rotary-dial telephones?

Not likely. Junk like that gets thrown in the trash.

If we lived in Cuba, however, the story would be different. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the economic crisis deepened. Poverty became pandemic, and Cubans were forced to engage in some truly inventive recycling. Since they had nothing new to work with, they found creative ways to make something out of nothing.

One person took an old rotary-dial telephone and turned it into an electric fan.

Another took an empty plastic bottle, one that used to hold antifreeze, and transformed it into a sign for his taxicab.

Still another person took a little plastic bear, a child’s old squeeze toy, and attached it upside down to a set of bicycle handlebars so that it would become a bike horn.

Now that’s what you call real recycling. Not simply putting old newspapers out on...