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Recycling on an Island


From left, Diane and Gary Brooks and Mafi Hamed spearhead the plastics recycling project at Plaza West on St. Croix. (Source file photo)

In St Croix, household waste of every kind goes in one bag and ultimately winds up in the landfill in Anguilla. Because of health and safety concerns, this site is operating under a consent decree and has been slated for closing for years.

Constructing new landfills is one aspect of dealing with the growing mountain of solid waste, but environmental activists say it is just as important to take action to cut down on the waste stream that ends up in landfills.

Proposed bills in 2018 to establish source separation centers and to recycle beverage bottles were never enacted. The Waste Management Authority is mandated to operate and maintain the wastewater and solid waste infrastructure throughout the territory, but since March 2018 it has been functioning without the appointment of a permanent executive director.

Executives of the major supermarkets here have launched recycling campaigns for their stores and join the ranks of a growing number of individuals and community organizations that are no longer waiting for the government to take action and have moved forward with their own efforts to implement recycling.

Business owner Mafi Hamed, who heads up Plaza West on St. Croix, had been sending wooden shipping pallets back to the states for recycling for three years when he decided to broaden his scope. Teaming up with environmental activists Gary and Diane Brooks, who had recently organized a successful beach cleanup, he made an offer to the community: bring us your clean, recyclable plastics; we’ll collect them, bale them, and ship them off-island for recycling.

The offer was made on a three-month trial basis, but the response from volunteers was so positive that the program continued to grow.

When he started the program, Willie Hamed said, “I’ll tell my customers, when they buy our goods, that we would be happy to take their containers back and recycle them.”

“We’re not in the business of recycling. We have never been, so I’m not taking whole containers from other businesses,” Hamed said. “But the community response has been increasing every week, and we hope that’s been bringing a lot of attention to the need to recycle and be more environmentally friendly.”

Hamed has his employees bale, wire, and ship what’s collected to St. Croix where it is consolidated and then sent to the states.

The program is not without costs – loading and unloading,

baling, and shipping – but Hamed is willing to bear the cost for now. “We live on an island,” said Willie Hamed. “Everything we consume comes from someplace else. We have to become more self-sufficient. If every company does that, we’ll have less and less for our landfill.”

Hamed looks for other ways to keep waste out of the landfill. He recycles pallets, milk and bread crates. He invites local farmers to come and take away old produce to feed their pigs and chickens. He’s now providing space to collect aluminum cans from the public and is working with schools to become collection points.

Recycling makes sense for big operations like supermarkets and companies that specialize in collecting recyclable goods from others, but what about small businesses?

The Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources launched a program in 2017 to encourage small businesses to cut down on the amount of waste that ends up in landfills, particularly single-use plastic. Working in collaboration with the Virgin Islands Conservation Society, DPNR’s Division of Coastal Zone Management offers grants and consultation services through its V.I. Clean Coasts program.

Kristina “Kitty” Edwards, who heads up V.I. Clean Coasts, said her program is not focused on recycling. Instead, she calls upon residents and businesses to “refuse, reduce, and reuse.” “Refuse” refers to the power of individuals not to buy products that are sold in single-use plastic containers.

“Reduce” refers to the practice of cutting down on the amount of trash we produce so that it doesn’t impact our landfills or water quality. “It’s everything we can do to reduce our carbon footprint,” Edwards said. “Reuse” refers to the practice of buying high-quality products that can be cleaned and used again, such as glass cups and metal utensils.

V.I. Clean Coasts assists small businesses by providing grants to cut down on single-use plastics. Through the program, one restaurant was able to purchase a dishwasher and eliminate the use of disposable cups and forks.

Leatherback Brewing on St. Croix wanted to move away from packaging their six-packs using plastic rings, which are known to entangle and strangle marine life. The company decided to purchase equipment that would allow them to package their beer in cardboard containers.

Though V.I. Clean Coasts couldn’t afford the cost of the equipment, Edwards said, the program could cover the cost of shipping the equipment to the territory.

The V.I. Clean Coasts program encourages businesses to take a proactive approach to “greening” their practices by offering environmental certification; two dozen businesses have qualified to be listed on the organization’s website.

https://dpnr.vi.gov/czm/programs-viczmp/vi-clean-coasts/vicc-certified-businesses/.

Much of Edwards’ time goes toward education as she works with businesses, community organizations, and schools to look at their own environments and practices. She helps them take the steps necessary to make a difference, such distributing reusable water bottles to employees, members and students. Asked why she doesn’t actively promote recycling, Edwards says, “Although there are small-scale examples of it working, plastic recycling is failing internationally.” China has stopped accepting most plastic waste from the west for recycling, and even cities with robust recycling programs like San Francisco are finding it too costly to recycle plastic and some other materials.

Although the problems of dealing with the territory’s solid waste may seem insurmountable, there are dozens of examples of individuals and community groups taking steps to address the issue.