It is great to hear how Devi cares about rubbish and her thoughtful solutions on dealing with the detritus that humans increasingly accrue. My husband and I spend many a ‘well-chewed-chocolate-biscuit-and-tea’ session discussing the ‘fineries’ of rubbish and how best to deal with it. Even when there is a rubbish bin close by, how do we know that it is not to be destined for a pristine forest, dumped into the sea or simply slung over a nearby cliff?

Over the past two years, we have been surveying breeding seabirds throughout the Lesser Antilles and in the course of our work have become familiar with the less savoury side of human waste. Grenada’s dump constantly smoulders noxious fumes into the sky; St Eustatius’s dump spews onto a beautiful beach with one of the key nesting sites for Red-billed Tropicbirds and Leatherback Turtles; Saba’s fills a ravine where hundreds of cats gather and are rapidly removing the last traces of the endearing native Audubon’s Shearwater; whilst St Maarten appears happy to fill in one of the last ‘wild’ areas on the island- the salt lagoon at Philipsburg, home to Black-necked Stilts, Snowy Egrets, White-cheeked Pintails and many other beauties.

We have similar strategies to Devi: we separate all waste; composting organic matter in a container over a couple of days/weeks where it quickly breaks down in the tropical climate, before it is either destined for the deep sea or preferably dug into a hole on the mainland. Tissue and unlaminated/unplasticated paper is torn into small pieces and discarded in the deep sea (not a happy solution, but we prefer this method to burning it and releasing CO2) and some bars/shops will take glass bottles (we have had success on Carriacou, Grenada and St. Lucia). The French Islands have recycling and Antigua limited recycling, so we save plastic container, glass and paper for those islands too. We don’t know if they actually do recycle, but at least we are supporting a greener solution.

Finally, as so many readers will already be doing, we buy food with limited/zero packaging, so we don’t have to deal with the problem in the first place. I never accept plastic bags (all the shop keepers in the Lesser Antilles think I am quite batty as I constantly refuse what they must feel to be an added value to the good) and we buy local vegetables and meat from the markets wherever possible so we can just bring our own bags and not deal with packaging. The Caribbean is certainly a long way behind many areas of the world when it comes to rubbish, but every now and then I am shocked as an islander whips out her cloth bag proudly! I think we must all learn from the Germans here, they are super efficient; you actually get paid when you return packaging for reuse!

Very best wishes,

Katharine

Katharine Lowrie

http://www.listalight.co.uk