by Matt Delany
Over the past few weeks I have been fortunate enough to join the crew on Khulula in the Caribbean heading west to the beautiful San Blas archipelago off the coast of Panama. In addition to visiting gorgeous and remote locales that we have grown accustomed to through the photos and stories that come off Khulula, the boat provides a wealth of time for a wide variety of discussion. Some discussions become much more interesting than others, but the one theme that is continually discussed is the state of our oceans and the waste that gets washed around in them.
On our visits through Trinidad, Columbia and Panama it appeared that the simple philosophy of recycling has been lost amongst the growth and development that drives these cities. On my return trip back to BC from Panama I ended up spending an afternoon with a couple that I met while we were all trying to make sense of the local bus routes. On a side note the buses in Panama are worthy of a few pictures as they receive the retired buses from the US and then have local artists put their creative stamp on them with wild designs inside and out. Over lunch with this couple, our discussion past the surface level very quickly and we were deep in conversation that brought me to OceanGybe and the motivation behind the trip. The wife of this couple had grown up in Panama and is now setting up a B&B so she was able to shed some light on the development in Panama and the broad environmental picture. In explaining the current situation, she recounted a story that shocked me.
“Recently visiting a large neighbouring family, a family of 12 kids that is, I was amazed at how clean their home was, especially given the amount of kids they had running around. The kitchen of this home was just spotless and so I just had to ask the mother how they were able to maintain that. Her answer was simply – Disposables. Everything that this family ate off and even used during the meal was disposable.” A moment of pause…Are you serious? As soon as they are finished with the meals for 12 it all gets swept off the table into the garbage and tossed away. Wow…This family had actually taken the time to think this through and decided that using disposables for their everyday life was really the way to go.
Not that our circle of friends is by any ways perfect, there is clearly a large gap in thinking or awareness of the impact of our daily actions and choices we make. The very next day of airport hopping back to BC provided numerous examples of this gap without really looking for it. Waiting at the check-in counter in Panama I noticed a large line up of people at the entrance waiting to get their bags saran wrapped ‘industrial style’, 5-10 times over for a sense of protection under this coat of plastic. Shortly later I picked up a modern living magazine with an opening story discussing “Earthships”, a modern design using used car tires as well as glass and plastic waste to construct low impact houses. This sharp contract in thinking continues through my airport experience as I read another article in a different magazine titled “Unpackaged”. As I start to read through the article I pass my water cup off to the flight attendant as she tells me that the airline doesn’t recycle plastics. The article then continues on to feature this new grocery store, Unpackaged, that sells products that have taken steps to limit the amount of packaging in their offering.
I really didn’t have to look that far to witness all these contrasts or gaps in thinking. With some forward thinking projects and business models operating right now this gap seems to be widening across a wide range of socio-economic classes. Great to see Khulula continuing all their efforts on this front and creating more discussion along the way.