Eco friendly solutions in St Maarten / Sint Martin
‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’. It starts with the choices we make and the products we buy. If we reduce the waste that comes into our homes, it will be easier to reuse (repair / fix / re-purpose) what we have and recycle (or compost) the remainder.
Vermicompost, or vermiculture, is the process of using earthworms to break down organic waste. Simply put, the worms eat your kitchen wastes, digest it, and the end result is worm castings. (Aka poop, or black gold to the gardeners!)
Have you ever thought about what you throw out every day? What makes up the bulk (by weight) of our trash? Food waste? Plastic? Glass? Perhaps by paying careful attention to a week’s worth of trash, we can better understand where we can make improvements in our lives. Continue reading “A Week’s Worth of Trash”
The Green SXM Pilot Compost Project is an add-as-you-go pile designed and scaled to process the waste created in a restaurant that serves between 400-500 meals a week. While the restaurant could provide more waste, we chose the 1 cubic meter limit because of the work required balancing the fruit and vegetable waste with enough carbon. Also, 40-50 lbs of food waste every two days is just the right amount to mix in one standard size wheelbarrow.
Continue reading “Green SXM Pilot Compost Project: Intro and Week 1”
A lot of our waste can skip the landfill and go straight to the compost. If you find yourself wondering ‘What Can I compost?’ here is a handy list! For more information on balancing greens (nitrogen sources) and browns (carbon sources), please see Composting 101.
Continue reading “What Can I Compost?”
Did you know that your kitchen sink is a warm wet breading ground for bacteria? An average kitchen sponge can house E. coli, salmonella, and a whole host of bacteria that we don’t really want to keep around in abundance. Here are a few kitchen sponge alternatives, and some reasons why you may want to consider using them Continue reading “Kitchen Sponge Alternatives”
It was wonderful to finally hear some facts and figures comparing waste management in Saint Martin with that of the South side in a Parliament Meeting. There have been complaints of French trucks bringing French waste over the boarder (The Daily Herald, 21st March 2018) – but few have gone far enough to explain why, until MP Frans Richardson mentioned it in Public Meeting #19. (Link to the feed here – It starts about 1 hour 12 minutes into the meeting)
Continue reading “Waste Management in Saint Martin”
Have you ever heard of a plastic attack? Also known as a shop and drop, it is a demonstration where people protest against excessive supermarket plastic packaging by buying their products and leaving all the packaging behind. They are taking the world by storm, from Ireland to the Netherlands.
Continue reading “Plastic Attack”
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is a handy catch phrase that is almost universally known. Teaching it begins in childhood – both at school and at home. However, it leaves out a few more important R’s – Namely Refuse, Re-purpose, and Rot.
Continue reading “Beyond Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!”
One of the areas we can make the biggest zero waste difference is in our bathrooms. On top of helping the environment, zero waste bathrooms can also save us money. A plastic free bathroom is getting easier and easier, thanks to the increasing global awareness over the fate of much of our plastic waste. Plastic is virtually forever. It doesn’t disappear, it just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces. It is in our bodies, our food, our water, and our oceans.
Continue reading “Plastic Free Bathroom”
Living on an island is wonderful, but sometimes we don’t get to see the innovative products and services offered in other parts of the world. As part of my journey towards zero waste, plastic free compostable dental floss sounded like a dream come true. Here is my unbiased review of Dental Lace’s Silk compostable dental floss.
Continue reading “Review: Compostable Dental Floss”
