Pollution in small island and coastal areas
Increasing amounts of trash are winding up in the world's oceans. There are various reasons for this: packaging materials (plastic, paper) of household products, an increasingly disposable lifestyle and not properly disposing of waste or the lack of means of being able to do so. I spent the summer of 2009 on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, working with a local fishermen group to document fish catch and creating a more sustainable fisheries. I also spent time working on a turtle conservation program, doing nightly beach walks to tag nesting sea turtles and collecting sea turtle eggs to put into a nursery to protect it from predators. The beach where I worked at is quite remote and it was littered with debris!
I would regularly see discarded items such as toothbrushes and flip flops on the beach. I learned that because of lack of trash pick-up programs, the locals would dump their trash into nearby rivers, which in turn would bring it out to sea and then wash up on the local shores. A program was set up locally by PRETOMA to educate the local communities and to change this mindset. |
Please watch the video to see how much trash is produced on a daily basis and where it goes.
Source: www.blazonlaurels.com