The crucial task to save the Dominican Republic from plastic waste

Santo Domingo – An unstoppable flow of single-use plastic objects and other solid and liquid wastes is virtually always launched to attack nature, traveling through streams that include the numerous streams of Greater Santo Domingo and finding their way to Dominican coasts through rivers headed by the Ozama, which is the one that receives the most waste. Signs of animal and plant life are rapidly becoming extinct on coasts of great economic and environmental value in a country that is essentially a tourist destination for beaches and sun, and that must preserve it’s marine and inland waters for the production of food in potential aquatic environments that additionally receive the scourge of sargassum.

To give a palpitating example, an avalanche of containers made of non-biodegradable polyethylene and other waste also aggressive to natural resources and coming from generalized consumption is ending up in the reservoir of the Monción dam, causing the decline of its capacity to produce species for fishing widely demanded in communities of the province of Valverde, shortening the life of that aquiferous reserve; placing itself as a sword of Damocles on its capacity to generate electricity and agricultural irrigation in the region. Other dams shorten their usefulness to the country due to the intense sedimentation caused by the loss of forests.

Concern is spreading among local environmentalists that the Dominican Republic is lagging in implementing measures to prevent these discharges. More than 18 territories surrounding the country’s Antillean neighborhood have banned single-use plastics and other objects made from the controversial chemical foam. First, three countries established bans in their jurisdictions; two others followed suit almost immediately with in-depth studies, and 14 moved to make them a priority project to proceed accordingly. The day that the Dominican Republic is the only country that embarks on the waters surrounding it, it will be accused by the world community.

Island authorities have gone ahead of those of this country in fighting the environmental, social, and economic impacts of the waste, including obstructions to drains that proliferate mosquito breeding grounds with more excellent transmission of diseases, including dengue fever, which is currently out of control in the Dominican Republic.

The fact that plastic garbage decomposes into micro-pollutants that can enter the food chain through the soil and freshwater fish before reaching the sea, which is its final destination, is alarming to these neighboring Antilleans.

The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, recently sententiously warned that all the seas, including the one that bathes the Dominican coasts, are flooded with more microplastics than stars in the galaxy to which the Milky Way Galaxy belongs.

“Of the remote islands of the Arctic there is not a single place left intact.” His message is simple for the inhabitants of the region of the globe in which the Dominican Republic is located. Everyone must: “Reject what you cannot use permanently. Together we can chart a path to a cleaner, greener world.”

TEST TO THE SONG

The river of the people of the capital, where the great admiral arrived with caravels after appreciating these lands as the most beautiful that human eyes have ever seen, has been transferring centuries later to the Caribbean Sea between 40% and 90% of the plastic waste floating in its waters, according to a joint study by the Technological Institute of Santo Domingo and The Ocean Cleanup.

Complementarily, technicians of this institution of higher studies detected, utilizing high-resolution cameras, a flow of microplastics in the fluvial torrent, about which science already says the following: “When ingested by marine life, such as birds, fish, mammals and plants, microplastics cause both toxic and mechanical effects, resulting in problems such as reduced food intake, asphyxiation, behavioral changes and genetic alteration.”

The omnipresence of plastic is frightening: more than 80 billion small plastic pieces float on the seas of the globe, and their arrival to Dominican coasts is not being impeded even minimally because, even in the 21st century, the final disposal of garbage inland in this geography is a debt scarcely paid by the State and its municipal administrations.

DAMAGE AT FULL SPEED

At the time, the environmentalist with a presence on the pages of this newspaper, Eleuterio Martínez, was alarmed to discover that trucks full of waste of all kinds, including construction waste and plastics destined for the garbage after being used only once, were dumped on the banks of the Ozama River in an environmental attack; a practice also detected to shore up land in populated areas on the occasion of the construction of a cable car. He saw in this outrage the possible cause of contamination of aquifers and suppression of wetlands of the national patrimony.

These imperishable plastics are not neutralized in their negative consequences by simply burying them under clay in the largest landfill in America: the Duquesa landfill. Martinez denounced the practice as inefficient and polluting. At that and other times, the Academy of Sciences has proposed industrializing the gigantic landfill because of the urgency of stopping the greenhouse gases and the leachates (noxious liquids by decomposition of the matter) that go to the subsoil from the degradations of Duquesa.

NOW OR NEVER

Environmentalist Luis Carvajal once referred to the alarming use of single-use plastic objects in his recurring speech. Calling for reducing their presence, he said: “Strong measures must be taken now because it would take one or two years to implement them one hundred percent. The Dominican Republic must have clear and forceful public policies that oblige the reduction of the use of plastics at a general level, and in this year (2024), the importation, production and commercialization of the most dangerous and polluting forms of plastic must be prohibited.”

As coordinator of the Environmental Commission of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, UASD, he added, “The climate change that we talk about so much because of its importance refers to the modifications of the earth’s climate due to natural causes but also due to the action of man” in allusion to plastics. He added that the consequences of climate change are severe and called for a higher level of recycling and reuse of plastics.

EXAMPLE OF MEXICO

The hemispheric North American country that is at the forefront of collecting and reintegrating plastics to neutralize their harmfulness is not the United States: Mexico stands out as a leader in the field of plastics recycling, possessing a widespread and positive industry in this field and placing itself in global and continental leadership.

For more than twenty years, Mexico has made steady progress in recovering plastic containers predominantly discarded in the food and beverage industry for new purposes or using them as raw materials for additional packaging. Reprocessing has been inspired by the achievements of European countries in transforming waste with a high recycling rate.

Two decades ago, Mexico recovered only 8% of the containers of imperishable and controversial polyethylene. Today, according to data from the environmental protection civil association ECOCE, the country collects 547,000 tons of the material per year, which indicates that 60% of the single-use containers introduced into the Mexican market are recovered in more than 30 specialized recycling plants.

Among the largest retailers of sugary beverages in Mexico is Coca-Cola, which is substantially equipped with a system for recovering plastics, a common environmental hazard worldwide. On the other hand, the United States announced plans to phase out single-use plastics in all public places by 2035. Paper sleeves of all sizes have been appearing at major retail outlets in the Nordic country for a long time.