I am St. Lucian. I love saying that with passion and pride in my heart. I am also a university student majoring in Environmental Science. The reason why I chose such a major is because I want to make a valuable contribution to my country, to make it a better place.
There are no recycling facilities in my country, as far as I know. To me, if such facilities are not present we should be practicing precycling. According to the Wikipedia, precycling is the practice of reducing waste by attempting to avoid bringing into the home or business items which will generate waste. I think there are a number of things that we St. Lucians can do to reduce the amount of waste we send to our landfill, there by helping our beautiful island even more.
Maybe after I graduate I will create an education programme to go into schools and promote such environmentally friendly lifestyles. Anyway, here are a few ways in which we can be precycle and be more environmentally friendly:
*Bring your own bag to the supermarket, market, butcher, wherever. There are sizable reusable bags available, and you can always make your own also.
*I don't see much of this in St. Lucia, but I strongly believe it would be a great investment - metal water bottles to stop the use of plastic bottles. Justifiably one may argue that water bottle filling stations would be needed, and that is true, but it might get more business places to have those available to customers and to their own staff too.
*Give up paper towels. I know it's "convenient" to not have to wash your kitchen towels, but seriously, you don't dry yourself after a bath with paper towels, it won't kill you to designate towels for certain areas. Towels for spills on counters and tables, for spills on the floor, for your car, etc.
*Buy things you can use again in different capacities. For example, if you sew, buy mayo in a glass bottle so that when it's done you wash it out and put your thread, or buttons or something of that sort in there. Before you buy think about how you can reuse the item again before throwing it out or without ever having to throw it out.
*Encourage your utility providers to go paperless. Many people have access to computers and have email addresses. Why do business places not think of saving themselves money and going paperless. Have online services so that you can email bills to customers?
These are just a few ideas I have as to ways in which we can help St. Lucia produce less waste and possibly be more productive.
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