Imagine that you had a time machine, and you could visit St. Kitts and Nevis 1000 years in the future. Guess what you would find at the landfill? Thousands upon thousands of plastic bottles. In fact, if we don’t do something different, St. Kitts and Nevis will suffocate under all the trash because of the longevity of these plastics and the effect of these plastics on the food web.

How Long Does Your Trash Last?
We live in a throwaway society. Convenience has become part of human culture in the last few decades. Instead of savoruing a nice hot cup of coffee in the morning, we buy it “to go” into foam cups designed to keep it warm. Instead of making a home-cooked meal with ingredients found in our local markets, we run to the grocery store to buy something quick and easy to serve for dinner, something that inevitably comes in a box, a can, or a plastic container. Why do we do this? We do this because we’re very busy, and these conveniences make our lives easier. But all these conveniences are not without consequences.

The average life of a human being spans approximately 70 years. An aluminium can lasts about 500 years; plastic water bottles - over 1000 years! A foam food container will last indefinitely; in fact, it might not break down at all! All of this convenience creates garbage, but where does this garbage go? Much of it makes it into the landfills, where it will sit for years and years to come. Some of it becomes litter and gets washed out to sea. However, this, too, will last for years and years to come. It’s just that it will end up on someone else’s shores.

Joining the Food Web
Whether it’s a plastic bottle that fell off the boat or a plastic bag that blew out to sea after a beach picnic, plastic won’t just disappear in the ocean. It may end up in a turtle’s belly, or even in your own! Everyone knows that plastic bags floating in the water are dangerous for sea turtles that may eat them, mistaking them for jellyfish. But what if I told you that it also might be dangerous for sea turtles to eat jellyfish because the jellyfish are loaded with plastics that they’ve eaten? Plastics are made from chemicals that do not break down. Here’s what happens: a plastic bottle left on the beach floats out to sea with the tide. Over time, water and weather work together to break up the bottle into thousand of tiny parts that look like zooplankton, the favorite food of jellyfish! Unlike zooplankton, the plastic doesn’t contain any nutrients. Furthermore, tiny plastic particles act like a sponge, soaking up toxins in the ocean, such as DDT and PCBs.

“So what?” you might say. “Who cares about jellyfish?” You should! Turtles aren’t the only ones who eat the jellyfish. Certain fish and birds eat them, too. Also, zooplankton isn’t just eaten by jellyfish: small fish eat them, sea birds eat them, and whales do, too. Our plastic bottle is soon a part of many different animals and containing many toxins. Larger bits of plastic are ingested by seabirds, which then stop eating because they feel full. Dead seabirds are found all over the world, their bellies full of plastic bits.

Still Not Convinced?
Understandably, dead seabirds, zooplankton and jellyfish, or the thought of eating bits of microscopic plastic in your conch fritters might not convince you. Its understandable because you can’t see it. See this then. Tourism is a major percentage of the islands’ economy. Its expected to grow in the next several years. St. Kitts is on the brink of major development. Why do tourists come here? Because paradise has always been envisioned as a tropical island with beautiful sand beaches, colorful reefs with bountiful fish, and lush vegetation. Is this what you are seeing on the islands now? Without everyone’s help, the beaches and reefs are not going to improve on their own.

St. Kitts and Nevis were shining examples of good recycling. Glass bottles were rarely abandoned on the beaches, as people collected them and turned them in. If you haven’t already heard, the days of glass soda bottles are over. St. Kitts Bottling Company has publicly announced the switch to plastics, touting big savings to the customer. Sure, the price of your soda will go down a few pennies, but the amount of plastics in your reefs, on your beaches, in your fish, on your land, and in your landfills is about to explode. Has anyone figured out the cost of that? If the reefs get trashed, if the beaches are piled up with trash, the cost from the resulting loss of tourism will be huge. I’m sure it will be greater than the few cents you will save on your drink. Once again, we need to stop and think about our habitual addiction to “convenience” because the number of people visiting the region is going to increase; the amount of food and drink sold is going to increase, and the amount of garbage created is going to increase. We need to take action.

What Can We Do?
For certain, this is an uphill battle. Most certainly, this is a global problem, not one that can be fixed overnight. However, that does not mean we should not do our best to do what we each can as individuals. Here’s a short list of things you could do right now:

• Lobby government officials to bring recycling programs to the islands.
• Tell storeowners you’d like to buy water in biodegradable bottles.
• Petition St. Kitts Bottling Company to develop a recycling program or switch to biodegradable bottles.
• Save your plastic bags and take them with you when you go to stores or to the market, or take a sturdy canvas bag.
• Ask your local street vendor if she’d consider selling her chicken in eco-foam containers instead of foam. If she would, then go tell the stores who sell the containers to stock them!
• Ask Solid Waste (469-7833) to add refuse bins on the beaches so that people can properly dispose of their trash.
• Teach your children good habits about trash disposal.
• Talk to your friends about the never-ending life cycle of plastics. Biodegradable plastic bags are available at grocery stores in other countries. Why not here?
• Join a beach clean up group or start your own. Take a bag with you whenever you’re spending a day at the beach and pick up whatever trash you find.

Yes, I know you didn’t leave the plastic bottle there originally; it probably came from far away, washing up on the shore. But while the trash doesn’t belong to any one person, the problems it creates belong to us all. And one step at a time, we can change the world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 9:46 pm and is filed under lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.