A Grass Roots Group Takes Up the Never Ending War on Trash

One organization is making a difference. “BICCU [Bay Islands Coastal Clean Up] started at my desk at the Port of Roatan,” says Dawn Hyde, Customer Service manager at the Port of Roatan. It was 2012 and Hyde was wondering why no one was doing a similar effort to the Ocean Conservancy’s 30 year-old world wide effort of International Coastal Cleanup. Since there appeared to be no such local effort, Hyde decided to start one herself.

With seven friends, she started an island-wide clean up that takes place twice each year. BICCU empowers the island community to grow stronger by working on a common goal. It builds community cohesion and provides some relief from the trash problems that increasingly plague Roatan. The Bay Islands clean-up effort has inspired similar programs in Tela, Omoa, and La Ceiba.

Every day rain and sea currents wash hundreds of tons of trash, especially plastics, onto the shores and reefs of the island. To counter that, BICCU organizes two clean-ups a year: there is one clean up before the rainy season and the other before the Holy Week tourist rush.

In 2018 things really ramped up when an international corporation became interested in Roatan’s garbage conundrum. Daniel Birnbaum, CEO of Soda Stream saw images of Roatan’s waters being filled with floating plastic and decided to help. “Everything happened in less than three hours,” remembers Michelle Mejilla, a Honduran who moved to Israel 18 years ago and graduated from Tegucigalpa’s Catholic University Environmental Department. SodaStream, an Israel based multinational, decided to locate their annual 2018 worldwide meeting on Roatan with part of their stay dedicated to picking up trash on the island. SodaStream is about to close a deal where it would be purchased for $3.2 billion by PepsiCo and its CEO, Ramon Laguarta, showed up on Roatan.”We can’t clean up all the plastic waste on the planet, but we each need to do whatever we can,” said Birnbaum, whose company makes sparkling water from ordinary tap water. As a result, Roatan got some international media exposure and 151 rooms at Fantasy Islands were filled in the low season.

Bay Islands clean-up effort has inspired similar programs in Tela, Omoa,
and La Ceiba.

In May, Mejilla spent four days scouting the most littered places of Roatan and decided to focus SodaStream’s main trash collection efforts at Jonesville’s Mangrove Point and Celebration Cay just south of Los Fuertes. 150 SodaStream employees and 150 Roatan schoolchildren picked up around 2,000 bags of debris. “We put aluminum and glass in green bags, transparent bags are for plastic,” said Hyde.

Dozens of groups of totaling almost 3,000 people took on the task of picking up garbage not only across Roatan but in Utila and Guanaja as well. “SodaStream added the fizz we needed to get the clean up moving this year,” said Hyde.

On the fifth day of the cleanup, the Mahogany Bay employees took their turn in picking up plastics and trash in the middle of the island. They were assigned one of the more polluted areas on Roatan: the Brick Bay mangrove next to the Brick Bay village. The currents and wind push the debris and garbage from open sea into the cove from the east almost directly into Brick Bay trapping tons of garbage.

There was driftwood, plastic bottles, metal cans and the volunteers even manage to pull out a boiler. The ladies gathered the garbage into bags and men pulled the bags in knee high water to the collection point. By the end of the morning a two meter high pile of bags was awaiting a garbage truck. “When we have the clean-up the Municipal trucks can’t handle the loads,” says Hyde who negotiates with local transport companies and taxis that do business at the Port of Roatan dock. The bags ended up at the Roatan Municipal trash dump where eight families live from recycling. “These ‘pepenadores’ separate the trash and sell it to recycling collectors,” says Zulema Santos, of the BICCU organizers. “There are so few people that value their work.” Mayor Julio Galindo has worked out an agreement with PepsiCo and the Cerveceria to establish an NGO – Island Green that provided a buy-back of recyclables on the island and facilitates free transport to recycling centers on the mainland but this subsidized NGO arrangement only lasts five years.

Inadvertently BICCU has become the islands emergency force. When a major weather emergency takes place on the island it is unlikely the central government would be able to provide fast and large enough support to the islands. It could be BICCU volunteers that will be going to affected areas and providing quick response aid.

I thinks an educational video should be prepared and be mandatory viewing for all schools on island. It should be played on the ferry on the way in and out of the island and available at the airport as well. Cab drivers and people renewing their drivers license should have to view it before getting a license. The dive shops on island should make presentations at the schools as part of their social contribution. Let’s try to stop the plastic before it reaches the ocean and not concentrate on picking it up after its already polluted the waters.

Roatan’s “the Last Straw” is wonderful initiative aiming at reducing the use of plastic single use straws in island restaurants. Already many island establishments will give you a metal straw or a bamboo straw. While some business owners are fighting extra hard to eliminate plastic single use products such as bags and straws, other ignore this and serve Styrofoam-to-go containers at an alarming rate.

As far as conservation goes, we are at infant stage. We are just beginning to awaken to the need to stop plastic from ending up in our sea. If this rate keeps as is, in a couple decades, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

We are already getting sick as a byproduct of fish consuming plastic waste and Styrofoam. As an island that depends on tourism we should be doing more to conserve the natural resources that the tourist come to see. We demonize one, or two individuals who fill in the reef and yet sit by idly as the Port of Roatan cruise ship terminal is set to destroy an entire bay and do or say nothing. Unfortunately, its all government sanctioned.

At a town hall meeting meant to explain the details of the cruise ship terminal expansion in which a mockup of the proposed expansion was presented the town folk almost unanimously rejected the proposal. They cited multiple objections to the third development phase of the cruise port. The main one was the environmental impact on the area and the loss of income from the passengers not leaving the “attractions” at the port.

There will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

At this meeting several participants requested a list of the partners in the Port of Roatan. We would desperately like to know who is benefiting from the destruction of the reef and our natural resources. The impact of just that many more toilets flushing at the port will be a strain on the water supplies.

The sad news is that we will be pillaged and plundered and all the investment will just leave the island. I hope we haven’t moved back to the conquistador days. The Port managers aren’t even Honduran and the money from this latest insult will be taken not only off island, but out of country.

It’s curious how an environmental permit was approved and environmental license given from the Honduran government. I wonder who at a high level has a vested interest in this project. I am perplexed where we could turn to for help if we are being sold out by our own central government. Where are our island elected officials when we need the most?

On the list of pressing problems is migration, but, strictly speaking, migration from the mainland to Roatan cannot be controlled given that the Bay Islands are a department of Honduras and not a separate territory. What can be controlled is enforcement of minimum building standards and minimum habitation standards. The enforcement should come not from some central government agency, but from Roatan Municipality itself. That would practically halt the migration as the island would become too expensive for every mainlander and their cousin. The illegally built homes are a threat to the future of growth on the island.

The Roatan Municipal, as our representatives and the stewards of our taxes and our future, should inspect all structures being built, fine the owners if they have no permit, stop them if they are constructed with inadequate construction methods and tear them down if they are build on land that is not owned by the people building there. The hill west of Coxen Hole is quickly beginning to look like a Brazilian favela. Every week a few more trees are cut down and a new wooden structure goes up. They have no permits, no inspections, no water or electricity. They are just a shelter and a base for new migrants to Roatan.

Migration to Roatan cannot be controlled by central government.

Curiously, there is one part of the Roatan Municipality fine system that is working well: it is the enforcement and collection of fines for illegally parked vehicles on the main streets of Coxen Hole and West End. The municipal police officers are motivated, professional and the 8-5pm parking regimen is enforced. They quickly boot the wheel of offending cars and enforce the Lps. 500 fines that contribute towards their salaries and the municipal budget. This professionalism and commitment to enforcing municipal ordinances should be applied to other areas like: illegal construction, improper drainage and poor and dangerous driving.

The municipalities of Roatan and Santos Guardiola should step in where central government has never stepped in. All permitted taxis should be required to undergo mechanical inspection at a designated motor shop once a year for a fee to be paid by the taxi owner. Anyone driving a taxi should be required by the municipality to participate in eight hours of safe driving training each year to be paid by taxi drivers.

The main reason why Roatan’s roads are in such bad shape is due to the traffic of huge, overloaded vehicles and debris brought in from private roads. If activity or neglect of property adjacent to the municipal roads causes damage to the pavement, the municipality should fine the property owner for the entire cost of repair of the road or damaged infrastructure.

Vehicle inspections are standard procedure in developed countries and Roatan should be no different, regardless of the Honduran central government’s capacity or willingness to require and enforce such inspections.

The island municipalities should pick up the slack left by the central government and clean every culvert and drain on every island road weather it is national or municipal. If the road disintegrates it becomes Roatan’s problem, not Tegucigalpa’s. While volunteer efforts are great, the island’s municipalities should hire a full time mobile cleaning crew that would continuously pick up all the plastic, metals, wood trash and transfer them to recycling collection points or garbage dump.

The Municipality should also inspect all boats that are no longer afloat and fine the owners of the property where that boat has rested. All boats should be salvaged or transported away for scrap.

While these are just some basic, commonsense proposals, they would save lives, they would attract investment, and they would make the island safer and more attractive for residents and visitors. It’s time to stop looking at how the other 17 Honduran departments are managing their business and get to work. If Roatan wishes to look like a developed, secure place, it needs to act like it.