Let’s help Panama Shine!
Panama is a unique country of naturally beautiful scenic areas. But many areas are marred by accumulations of trash; on roadsides, in rivers, along coastlines, in other natural areas, and in urban areas.
Much of the trash that persists is plastic waste which, when removed from the landscape, or collected by sanitation trucks ends up in landfills or is incinerated in the open air. These practices have negative health consequences for the public, and negatively impact Panama’s natural beauty.
On November 18th Newsroom Panama published an article promoting the campaign ‘Panama Looks Better without Trash’. This is the slogan chosen for a coalition launching a campaign to promote a cleaner Panama for environmental, health and economic (tourism) reasons. One official stated, “Panama is drowning in trash, and the solution begins with each one of us.”
This new coalition, made up of several organizations, seeks to transform the relationship between citizens and their environment and to spread the message of action and collective responsibility. One of the coalition members, Ancon, is launching a platform on its website http://www.ancon.org to centralize information and collaboration spaces for this venture.
Certainly student education and public messages and slogans can inspire and motivate the populace to regard trash and garbage in a new way, and to treat it differently.
To help catalyze and support a movement to clean up and Beautify Panama, in line with the slogan, “Panama looks better without Trash”, and to promote the logic and practice of the three R’s: ‘Reduce, reuse, and recycle’, Panama might also consider:
- Spearheading an organizational effort with a system of collection and rewards. This would likely immediately increase the collection of the pre-existing trash in the environment.
- Giving people incentives to collect trash on urban streets, country roadsides, in drainage ditches, and along rivers and the coastline by offering coupons for discounts on merchandise, or even modest cash payments for collected trash. This could be based on weight, volume, or type of trash collected. Trash separation and recycling can be introduced simultaneously, as most areas do not recycle as of yet.
- A reward system such as this would likely be an enticing incentive to involve citizens and young people in collecting and bringing this trash to designated trash receiving centers.
- This would have the added benefit of the sate helping to boost the income of the citizens instead of funding businesses to handle trash management. Imagine this: citizens; youth, adults, families, turning the collection of roadside trash into a rewarding activity!
- Providing trash collection bags to citizens free of charge would be helpful in this effort.
- State enacted legislation with ambitious goals with teeth.
- One example is “bottle bills” or “container deposit laws,” whereby a five to ten-cent container refund value provides a monetary incentive for the public to return their containers for recycling. Deposit laws also provide an incentive to the manufacturers to encourage recycling,
- Brazil now leads the rest of the Americas in its recycling rate as a result of its efforts to manage trash and plastic pollution. One area of Brazil has even introduced a program where all businesses that use plastic bottles and packaging in the sale of their products are responsible for the final environmentally responsible destination of said bottles and packaging. If companies don’t comply they must contribute to the new ‘Rio Ama os Rios’ (Rio Loves Its Rivers) Eco-barriers program or be fined.
Harmony Gates, Tierras Altas
dehavenlygates@gmail.com
