May 4th, 2018 -- Nevis Historical and Conservation Society (NHCS) will join the global community in celebrating World Environment Day 2018 which will be marked tomorrow, Tuesday, June 5.
World Environment Day was launched in 1972. This year’s theme is "Beat Plastic Pollution".
According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), this year’s theme urges governments, industry, communities, and individuals to come together and explore sustainable alternatives and urgently reduce the production and excessive use of single-use plastic polluting our oceans, damaging marine life and threatening human health.
In his inaugural address to the Nevis Island Assembly in January 2018, the Premier of Nevis, Hon. Mark Brantley stated that his government would pursue efforts to ban plastics and Styrofoam in Nevis, recognizing the grave threat that these products pose to the environment and ultimately to our health. To be successful this highly welcome move would require a concerted effort by all Nevisians with careful planning and analysis of alternatives to plastic bag use.
The UN theme resonates in Nevis where plastic use has spiralled out of control during the last two decades making its effective disposal increasingly problematic. Plastic bags, bottles, cutlery and utensils, an integral part of take away/throw away culture, littering roadsides, ghauts and beaches, school grounds, parks and other public and private spaces are destroying landscape and polluting seas.
Plastic pollution which has become all invasive is seen as a global emergency. Its impact on the environment and ultimately on human health is of huge concern. Over the last decade the world has produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.
It is estimated by the UN Environment Programme that a mind boggling 5 trillion plastic bags are used annually and one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute. At least 13 million tons of plastic end up in the sea annually. Approximately 50% of plastic is just used once and thrown away with only about 9% of plastic waste recycled. Plastic pollution negatively impacts nearly all marine organisms with millions of seabirds killed annually and over 50% of sea turtles ingesting plastic.
Plastics have been found in 25% of fish examined in the US and Indonesia, with minuscule particles even found in sea salt. Particles are now found in tap and bottled water around the world. Mammoth plastic garbage patches as large as countries or continents now exist in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. While the effects of plastics ingested by humans are not fully known, toxic properties in these particles have been transferred to other mammals.
In response to this global crisis a growing number of countries around the world are resorting to banning or taxing plastic bag use. These include Kenya, Chile, Australia, China, the UK, a number of European countries and some states in the USA. Antigua and Barbuda was the first country in the Latin America/Caribbean region to ban plastic bags outright in 2016. Other Caribbean territories pursuing such policies include the Bahamas, Belize, Guadeloupe and St. Thomas, USVI.
Collaboration will be essential between the government, the Nevis Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA), the business and hospitality sector, NGOs, households and individuals. An island wide education and awareness raising campaign would have to be undertaken and creative alternatives to plastic bag used undertaken. Such a move could generate innovative income raising initiatives and would do wonders for our natural environment and our tourism industry.
The NHCS agrees that decisive action from the top is essential to stem the plague of plastic. We must learn from past and ongoing local efforts such as the initiative by the NSWMA and leading supermarkets in 2011 to tax plastics bags and introduce recyclable shopping bags and the recent initiative by Rams Supermarket which encouraged shoppers to use their own bags by giving a $1 reusable bag token for purchases over $50.
Another commendable effort is that of the Joan Robinson Memorial Fund which began an ongoing bottle collection and recycling initiative in 2014 in collaboration with Admirals in St. Kitts. Environmentalists are urging people to move beyond the banning of plastic bags to envisioning a plastic free world. Let us help to make that dream a reality by tackling the scourge of plastic pollution on our beautiful island.
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