Commentary:
By Patrick Chester
Today I did something on this Island I would never have done during my time in the UK, the US or Europe. I threw a tin can in the garbage.
I shouldn’t feel bad about not recycling it though. No-one on Grand Cayman should. Because until there’s a government sponsored home recycling drive in place, there’s nothing we can do.
I threw the tin away, off to a life on top of what could be Cayman’s highest point; the landfill mountain outside of George Town.
I found myself asking, as well as the main garbage bin for household rubbish that can’t be recycled, where are the separate boxes for paper, for tins and glass and for plant waste?
I know many do recycle, many do take care to turn off lights and many still preach lessons taught by their elders to never waste clothes and food.
But even in this age of consumerism there’s no room for ignoring the mountain of garbage on this island. Put simply, there’s no more reason to throw away a tin can than there is to follow it with a few dollar notes in the waste basket too.
A quick search through Cayman’s newspaper archives shows that the majority of businesses on the island are working hard to be environmentally responsible. Recycling initiatives in schools, in bars and the Global Green Caribbean’s initiative to recycle old telephone directories shows there’s a growing will amongst Cayman’s citizens and businesses to work on this.
But recycling should start in the home. We all have a hand to play in keeping the island clean. By allowing the government to ignore household waste, the mountain of trash will only grow.
Although responsibility ultimately falls to us to dispose of recyclable trash in the proper way, it’s the government which has to step in to ensure there’s a service available to guarantee household waste will be discarded properly.
The attitude of government has to be that if people take care in what they throw away, it will then ensure it’s properly collected and recycled.
In Europe, the EU has pushed forward for the last decade with its Landfill Directive, a policy requiring European governments to commit to find new ways of dealing with their household waste. This has included the large scale composting of biodegradable material, something which Grand Cayman would have a ready use for, even if only to provide high quality compost for parks and wildlife areas.
On June 16 of this year, the ever-sensible Dave Schudel and Jack Benz gave some good pointers on what we as citizens can do to reduce the size of the landfill: “Don’t buy what you don’t need, buy items with less packaging, reuse what you can, give to charity rather than throw away and so on.”
Dave and Jack questioned whether this would make a difference to the size of the landfill. It seems a start, but the landfill should be a last resort for garbage. Better to put a system in place to categorize different materials before it leaves the home or business.
A recycling plant would be an expensive upfront cost but once in place that landfill will be full of only materials, which can’t be recycled. A composting site for vegetable and fruits would cost even less, and could be used as high quality soil feed.
Is there a reason then why the government has so far offered only half-hearted gestures to update what is an archaic way to dispose of household waste, simply allowing it to fester in the heat?
Possibly it’s the economic cost of recycling.
In truth, we make little on the island. What would Cayman do with the recycled metals, plastics and paper if it couldn’t be reused for products manufactured on the island? In other countries it could be fed back into the manufacturing industry, so what could our government do with it?
Is it too costly to ship it out to where it could be sold for reuse?
Caybrew’s pledge to collect empty bottles makes sense. It must lower its operating costs to be able to reuse the glass, rather than import bottles from abroad. On the other hand, it makes no economic sense for Crown Imports to collect up its empty Corona bottles, as it would have to ship them back to the US for reuse. It’s easier for the importers to simply ignore island recycling, to the detriment of the island.
So could it be living on an island is holding the government back from updating its garbage disposal system?
If it is a cost issue, ignoring Mount Trashmore will continue to unless it’s forced to put a recycling process in place by the people.
Critics will say that this is not the time to be worrying about introducing costly new measures to protect the environment, when the island economy is facing economic losses as part of the global downturn. But our environmental actions should stand firm against the cost to our pockets.
Never should we allow our civic duty to be pushed aside by economic pressure. Never should we discard good ideas to maintain a status quo that’s incompatible with the environment, and soon to be the rest of the world.
Recycling is the most immediate way we can ensure Grand Cayman retains its beauty, and set an example to other Caribbean islands.
Urge the government to make a stronger case for recycling. The future isn’t landfills, dumping garbage on cargo boats or burning it, it’s working smarter to minimize waste.
Tins, bottles and paper should be in a separate box outside the home or apartment. The government should organize a separate collection after general garbage is collected, and it should subsidize the collection. It can sell the recyclable material it collects.
All over the world and as Dave and Jack said on cruise ships too, people are starting to smarten up to the idea of recycling.
Let’s not let Grand Cayman fall by the wayside in this new age of austerity.
About the Author: As a researcher and writer for a marketing business consultancy, Patrick Chester worked in writing positions between Grand Cayman and London for the past two years.
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