POF activists battle Brac beaches

| 07/10/2019 | 21 Comments
  • Cayman News Service
  • Cayman News Service

(CNS): Students on Grand Cayman leading the environmental charge locally were recruiting new supporters in Cayman Brac at the weekend. Activists from the Protect Our Future campaign as well as Plastic Free Cayman and the National Trust visited schools and hosted a meet and greet at Popo Jeb’s Pizza to discuss the issues and help them develop their own campaigns.

The campaigners appeared to find willing supporters, as the young people on the Brac are seeing first hand massive plastic pollution on the shorelines there as the island is the first stop for single-use plastic trash flowing from countries like Haiti.

“Most people seem to be unaware of this issue, yet it is happening in front of our eyes,” the young people said. The students on Grand Cayman learned that their peers on the Brac need more support with clean-ups, given the amount of trash washing up there.

And despite the rain this weekend, the POF students joined forces with more than 30 Brac volunteers and collected almost 1,800lbs of trash from the beaches on the south side of the island over the weekend. When the students arrived at the first beach, they said it was literally covered in plastic.

“It was obvious that the Caribbean has a huge waste management issue,” the young activists, who are pressing the Cayman government for a ban here on single-use plastic, said. “We can speak of recycling and reusing, but the reality is there is just so much plastic being created every day. The tap on plastic needs to be slowed and shut off.”

They said that much of their efforts were focused on cleaning up sites where the local population of booby birds are nesting. But while they made a serious dent in the plastic trash, they remain concerned that these birds are incorporating plastics into their nests and evidence that they are also consuming the plastic, making the need for clean-ups even more important.


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Category: Land Habitat, Science & Nature

Comments (21)

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  1. Anonymous says:

    Thank you for coming over to the Brac and helping out. Greatly appreciated.

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  2. Anonymous says:

    The biggest worldwide manufacturer of polystyrene foam and plastic cups is in your backyard. Why not protest outside Dart’s house or Camana Bay.

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  3. Anonymous says:

    Come on over to seven mile!

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  4. Anonymous says:

    Is that a single use throw away plastic poncho I see? LOL.

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  5. Anonymous says:

    “POF activists battle Brac beaches”

    What did the beaches ever do to them?

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  6. BracFan says:

    Thank you to the young people who are trying to fight this problem washing up on our shores! And yet there is again plastic and styrofoam mess on the Brac’s south side… it just keeps coming. I’m not sure what the solution is, but grasping that there’s a problem is the first step.

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  7. Anonymous says:

    Keep raising your voices kids. This planet is your home and the adults in power are tragically negligent and criminally stupid when it comes to conservation.

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    • Anonymous says:

      Yes, here a great idea, let’s let children govern world affairs and industries.

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      • Anonymous says:

        Better than what we got right now, i’m sure they’d do a better job.

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      • Anonymous says:

        Nice strawman there. At no point did OP suggest letting children govern world affairs.

        But I suppose merely taking their views seriously on a topic that they will be left to deal with is just too much huh?

  8. Anonymous says:

    Also teach the children in the Brac to say no to drugs

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  9. Sorry we're doomed says:

    It’s too late kids. Every living organism on earth has micro plastics within them. We had the stone age, the bronze age and, now we have the plastic age.

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  10. Anonymous says:

    They should meet with Boyan Slat. This young Dutch man deserves Nobel prize in environment protection. While everybody keeps talking, he is quietly working on the first ever attempt to implement Pacific trash vortex cleanup system.

    The Ocean Cleanup project finally cleaned up some plastic.
    https://theoceancleanup.com/about/

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