Today’s news that 2,600 metric tons of scrap metal was shipped from St. Maarten to the Netherlands will no doubt be welcomed by many. After all, there was widespread concern about the growing “mountain” of mainly discarded car parts on Pond Island as recently illustrated with a picture in the May 31 newspaper.
Readers now know that the heap could have been even bigger without efforts to export the castoff materials. That so much nevertheless remains is understandable if one looks at the magnitude of the problem, with some 70 per cent being 1,264 crushed wrecks of cars damaged by Hurricane Irma on September 6, 2017.
It must be said, plans for increased waste separation and recycling on the Dutch side had been in place long before then, but the sheer amount of rubbish the record-strength tropical cyclone left behind was quite overwhelming. Temporary satellite dumpsites needed to be created in several areas for the trash collected when clearing the roadsides.
All that stuff ended up on the new so-called “baby dump” opened for such, separate from the nearby landfill where regular garbage is deposited. Frequent fires in both locations have since led to a public outcry over the smoke’s impact on the environment and people’s health.
Sending more recyclables abroad is obviously a no-brainer at this point, so long as that doesn’t imply an additional burden on the already troubled national budget. It might not resolve the issue, but can certainly help prevent it from getting far worse.
