Waste Management
Waste management is an important idea to focus on when working on sustainability and conservation for the planet. A lot of facilities do not dispose of waste properly. Many companies dump chemicals or trash illegally, do not recycle, or re-purpose items for another use. I have learned in my Introduction to Sustainability and Management class (ENVR231) that although there are many laws and regulations in place, companies find many loopholes to get around them or cover them up.
While I was abroad in the Galapagos Islands, I was very interested in learning about the waste management systems. Because the islands are so protected, I believed they would have an excellent waste management system. Unfortunately, this was not the case at all. While abroad I took a course called Ecosystem-based Management, where I got to look at a lot of issues involving sustainability and waste treatments. My professor provided the students and I the opportunity to go to the dump on our home island of San Cristobal. With this outside the classroom experience, we toured the facility and talked with the manager of the place. Before this field trip, I had noticed that every building I had been in on the island had three separate bins for trash, one for compostable material like banana peels, one for recycling such as plastic bottles, and one for landfill trash like a wrapper. I was horrified to find out that, although every building in the Galapagos had a recycling bin, all the trash and recycling that was collected was thrown into the same place in the end. They were not separating the recycling from the landfill trash, but treating everything as a non-recyclable piece of garbage.
Another problem with waste management on the Galapagos Islands comes from their water treatment. All of the water used in households and public buildings ran directly into the ocean after being used. This included showers and toilet water. For this reason, the people of the Galapagos do not throw their toilet paper into the toilet, but place it in the garbage can next to it. When I first arrived there, I didn't understand the reason why we were supposed to do that, but it was explained to me during my Ecosystem-based Management class. This idea is terrible for the environment, the organisms, and the people living on the islands. Because the water from toilets is not treated, all the waste is washed directly into the ocean right near the beaches. One day, we experienced a hard rain for about two days. This rain washed all the sewage out and immediately into the ocean, carrying soil and sand with it. This caused the water to become completely muddled and toxic to the people swimming in it, and it became necessary for everyone to avoid the ocean around the sewage pipe for about five days to clear the water out.Although a waste management program can often be expensive, the islands have a lot of funding from world wide projects to assist in preservation because it is declared a marine protected reserve. They should restructure their programs to make waste management a top priority for the spending of this money, as the waters are what justify the Galapagos Islands as the marine protected reserve in the first place. The waters around the islands are the only known breeding area for two of the most endangered water species in the world, the Whale Shark and the Hammerhead Shark.
Overall, it was a frustrating experience seeing how little a marine protected reserve like the Galapagos Islands actually was doing to contribute to the safe and proper disposal of waste products. It is dangerous to the people as well as the environment, and change should occur as fast as possible.
