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Green Voice:companies should be more environmentally accountable
by THe Daily Herald
Posted: Oct 3, 2005 14:30 UTC
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PHILIPSBURG - St. Maarten Green Voice Foundation is calling on the Executive Council “to make companies more accountable and to stop them from putting profit before communities and the environment.”
Companies are among the worst environment wreckers, mostly responsible for the burning of the landfill that is affecting all of us today. The fire (at the landfill) has nothing to do with “electrical wires” rather than the dumping of explosive and toxic material that is releasing toxins and causing pollution at the highest level, which is bad for the environment and our health, Green Voice President Stephane de Dje-Robert stated on Sunday.
The environmental watchdog group is calling on Government to consider introducing a tax on plastic bags to reduce litter and pollution on the island and to impose an environmental tax on cooking gas companies and brewage distributors for the proper disposal of their used green bottles.
A “compulsory doorstep recycling collection scheme” for every household and business is also needed, the foundation president said. “Almost all the goods on the island are imported. As separation and re-utilization of waste are non-existent and any form of waste treatment is lacking. The environmental quality of the waste goes down, while the volume goes up at the sanitary landfill, which grows faster day by day because of the many contaminating products that are being used in all kinds of processes.”
In order to tackle the waste issue, de Dje-Robert said a policy needs to be chosen that will try to prevent waste from entering the island in the first place. “This prevention can be achieved by setting import regulations for packaging materials. Second step is re-utilizing products as much as possible.”
However, Green Voice warned that tackling the problem of plastic bags would only be “a drop in the ocean,” but this move would mirror a similar scheme introduced in other islands, which have seen a dramatic fall in the number of plastic bags being wasted and beer bottles being re-used.
“The decision-makers must not only deal with the waste crisis, but also be part of a broader government strategy to tackle waste. Even incinerators that generate electricity are not an energy saving option. Recycling saves far more energy, because it means making less new things from raw materials.”
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