Philipsburg:--- GEBE Managing Director, William Brooks, presented the new GEBE reusable bags to representatives of the St. Maarten Environmental organizations, including St. Maarten Pride, EPIC, St. Maarten Heritage Foundation and the Nature Foundation. The logos of the various organizations are depicted on the bottom of the bags to show GEBE's support of the local environment and the organizations' joint aim to reduce single use plastic bags on St. Maarten.
Brooks stressed that "GEBE is a part of this community and GEBE is committed to our community and our environment. We are trying to bring about awareness about the dangers of plastics bags for the environment and for our community. But it is bigger than just us. It is a global problem. With the theme "A Local Solution to a Global Problem", GEBE aims to bring awareness to the growing problem of plastic and garbage in our environment especially as we are not able to recycle."
The image on the bag depicts everyone in the community joining together to solve this global problem. With images of the plastic soup of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean, it is important for our small communities that especially rely on beaches, diving and marine life to reduce our contribution to this global problem and protect our surroundings and beaches.
By simply bringing along a reusable bag when shopping, it is possible to eliminate up to 1664 single use plastic bags during the lifetime of the bag. Customers often complain that they forget to bring along their reusable bag when shopping. A tip for remembering to use your reusable shopping bag is to ensure it is in your car or bag when going grocery shopping. If you forget to bring it in the store, you can always ask your bag packer to put your groceries back in the cart and transfer them to your reusable bags when you get to your car.
Jadira Veen of the St. Maarten Pride expressed her appreciation of GEBE for the initiative to bring awareness to consumers and supermarkets. Two major supermarkets have now banned single use plastic bags, namely Cake House and Market Garden. The simple act of bringing a reusable shopping bag can really cut down the amount of plastic in our community. During a recent clean up at the fresh pond for World Wetlands Day, layer and layers of plastic was found between the mangrove trees filling more than 40 trash bags. "For the first time in our clean ups, there was still a mess of plastic when we left. We would need an additional 100 volunteers to remove all the plastic we found. Plastic is more than just an environmental issue. The congestion of plastic in these areas causes flooding especially when drains and gutters become clogged with trash."
Elsje Bos of the St. Maarten Heritage Foundation saluted GEBE. "This is the second time that I am here to receive your reusable bag and I use them all the time. We also show it in the museum to visiting schools. There is so little respect shown to our environment."
Rueben Thompson of EPIC has been pushing for a ban of plastic bags. In a recent press release, he highlighted the many dangers of the single use plastic bags citing that the Pacific Garbage Soup can be found in our own fresh pond, where years of plastic disposables have been collecting from the run off of rainwater through the gutters and drains.
"The reality of the matter is, however, that many stores will continue to provide these bags and consumers will continue to use them unless legally restricted from doing so. It is therefore high time for our parliamentarians and ministers to take initiative as the people's representatives, and show that they are the caretakers of the environment by passing legislation to ban disposable plastic carryout bags." Thompson commended GEBE and hopes that other corporate entities will follow suit. "And for those who do not, we need government to ban single use plastic bags."
Tadzio Bervoets of the St. Maarten Nature Foundation recounted his experience in finding plastic bags when conducting underwater research. The plastic is found smothering coral reefs and breaking coral when it gets caught in the tide. "To put the issue of plastic in the marine environment into perspective, we are expecting the turtle nesting season to start in approximately one month. St. Maarten is one of the few nesting places for the leatherback turtle, an endangered species that only have several dozen thousand left in the world. These turtles main diet is jellyfish, but they have difficulty in telling plastic bags from jellyfish and many turtles have died from suffocation or starvation by ingesting a plastic bag. I also commend GEBE on providing so many reusable bags to the public.
This is the third time GEBE is distributing reusable bags on the islands of St. Maarten, Saba and Statia in support of the environmental organizations goals to reduce plastic in the environment. A total of 20,000 bags were distributed to GEBE customers during the month of December 2010.
A box of bags was also given to each environmental organization to use during educational presentations.
