Plastic Challenge: It’s Bag to the Drawing Board
By John Denny
Observer Reporter
(Charlestown, Nevis) – After meeting with business owners and members of the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society about replacing plastic shopping bags with reusable bags, Solid Waste Management Authority is reconsidering its approach to making the transition.
“There was some opposition to the way we were planning to do it,” said General Manager Carlyn Lawrence of the Solid Waste Management Authority. “We were hoping the stores and the customers could share the cost, but when you consider how many businesses use plastic shopping bags it becomes a much more complex issue.”
The issue, tens of thousands of plastic shopping bags being used on Nevis every week, is not so much the space the bags occupy in a landfill, but that so many become litter and worse yet they are damaging the marine ecosystem surrounding the island.
Early in the meeting, Ms. Lawrence suggested replacing plastic could take as little as 90 days, but after some feedback from the business owners, said perhaps the proposed timetable was “a little too ambitious.”
“I know this isn’t going to happen overnight,” said Ms. Lawrence. “The people of Nevis look at solid waste as someone else’s problem. We need to take responsibility for the litter we see all over this island and start taking steps to correct it.”
Owner of Superfoods, Ken Evelyn was a pioneer in replacing plastic with reusable bags several years ago.
“We bought bags and sent them home with the customers and maybe a half-dozen people ever brought them back,” Mr. Evelyn said. “The only way this will work is if you ban plastic (bags) on the island.”
This comment brought a variety of responses from the other business owners. One of the concerns was that it might not be fair to the smaller businesses that only use a fraction of the plastic the grocers use. Ms. Lawrence was skeptical about a ban that would involve legislation.
“If we wait for the government to pass legislation on this issue it will never get done,” she said.
Ms. Lawrence had a variety of reusable bags at the meeting that ranged in price from EC$3 to EC$8. A number of ideas were presented by the various business owners and NHCS members as to how they could be paid for. A near equal number of reasons those ideas wouldn’t work were also presented.
As close as the Solid Waste Authority could come to helping defray the cost was to do the importing of the bags to avoid duty and taxes.
“Sold Waste is always underfunded,” said Ms. Lawrence. “I don’t know where the environmental tax on the plastic bottles and the used cars goes, but it doesn’t come to us. The plastic bottles and the cars eventually make it to us, but the money doesn’t. We are always struggling to make ends meet because of fuel and equipment expenses. The landfill cell we are using right now is full. We have the ground to develop another one, but it is going to be expensive and I don’t know where we are going to get the money.”
The new approach Ms. Lawrence plans to take is to first survey shoppers on possible options to the problem and to look for lower prices on reusable bags. She also plans to solicit corporate sponsorship for the bags.
“It could be free advertising for them to have their logo on the bags,” she said. “If we could get several sponsors on board, we could make this happen a lot faster and at a lower cost.”
Widespread use of plastic bags on Nevis is fairly new – 15-20 years – so making the switch to more eco-friendly re-usable shouldn’t be that hard, Ms. Lawrence noted. A public awareness and education campaign would be the first step.
Mr. Evelyn suggested starting in the schools and by teaching the kids, the parents would follow.
“We need to be teaching the kids to keep Nevis green,” said Mr. Evelyn. “It needs to be taught early and consistently because they are the ones who will inherit Nevis.”
