A+ for effort El Chalten

El Chalten is known for being a very environmentally friendly city by Argentinian standards. However, despite their best efforts we gave them an “F” for execution.
1. No plastic bags for your groceries – good idea, but it would be even better if they didn’t plastic bag all your produce.
2. Encourage people to use less electricity – hostels ask us to turn off lights and reduce water consumption, but turn on the heater and open the window above it. The laws of thermodynamics lead one to believe that all the hot air will then blow out the window. Also, very few buildings have insulation, vapour barriers, weather stripping or double paned windows. With a climate similar to Calgary they must think gas can easily be found next to nearby penguin breeding colonies.

















3. Sort garbage from organics and recyclables – we were so excited to see this, but El Chalten forgot to separate the compartments inside ......
















4. Collecting garbage – signs everywhere ask you to put your garbage in the bins. However, since the dump is next to the river and the wind is always gale force strong, you can guess what happens; don’t even think about all the stuff leaching into the ground and then the river. Frequently, El Chalten’s famously strong winds allow tourists to see garbage soaring in the sky more often than condors. The most environmentally friendly thing to do in this situation is to throw the garbage in the river yourself and reduce pollution created from collecting it. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to do this though, yes, we are bad people.