Urges Community to use Sint Maarten Recycle Facilities on W.J.A Nisbeth Road
The St. Maarten Nature Foundation is calling on the community to make use
of the St. Maarten Recycling Bins on the W J. A Nisbeth Road (Pondfill
Road) opposite Blue Point. For the past weeks the Nature Foundation has
been collecting plastic bottles from marinas, private yachts and boat
owners in the Simpson Bay Lagoon as well as from the Cole Bay community
and has been bringing it to the Recycling Bins which will subsequently be
recycled by Sint. Maarten Recycle.
Water bottles are made of completely recyclable polyethylene terephthalate
(PET) plastics. However but PETs don’t biodegrade they photodegrade, which
means that they break down into smaller fragments over time. Those
fragments absorb toxins that pollute St. Maarten Ponds and Lagoons,
contaminate the soil and sicken animals which we then eat. Plastic trash
also absorbs organic pollutants like BPA and PCBs and can take centuries
to decompose while sitting in the Great Bay Landfill, which, according to
a recent Huffington Post article, amounts to endless billions of little
environmentally poisonous time bombs.
According to the Ocean Conservatory, plastic bottles are the most
prevalent form of pollution found on our beaches and in our oceans —
every square mile of the ocean has over 46,000 pieces of floating plastic
in it and ten percent of the plastic manufactured worldwide ends up in the
ocean, the majority of that settling on the ocean floor where it will
never degrade.
The Nature Foundation urges the community to make use of the recycling
facilities. For more information contact the Nature Foundation at 5444267
or Sint Maarten Recycle at 5430155. Sint. Maarten Recycle also recycles
aluminum, glass and cardboard materials.