Oct

12

Recycle for a life cycle

October 12, 2009 | 1 Comment

wheatleybradyannThe Latin American and Latino Studies Program offers travel grants for Brandeis students to conduct research in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Latin American diaspora in the United States.  Brady Anne Wheatley ‘07, one of the past recipients of Jane’s Travel Grant, is currently living and working in Baja California Sur, where she serves as the Student Affairs Manager at The School for Field Studies.   She started a community service project focusing on recycling plastics, using art and building symbolic structures, to bring attention to the issue during the annual Sea Turtle Festival.  The following excerpts are from an article published by PeopleandPlanet.net.

Globally, one billion marine animals and birds die every year from eating discarded plastics. And, according to Mexican Environment Minister Jose Luis Luege, Mexico has one of the lowest garbage recycling rates in the world. Now, one seaside town has shown that local communities can take action to turn the tide of plastic waste and help the turtles to survive.

The sign read in Spanish, “We used 2,000 plastic bottles to make the turtle, which is less than .001% of the number of plastic bottles we use in North America every five minutes.” It was a small but powerful companion to the oversized green sea turtle that lay lifeless on the grey stone of the festival plaza.

In August of 2008, over 10,000 people came from all over Mexico as well as the United States to participate in the seventh annual Sea Turtle Festival, created in 2001 to promote responsible fishing and turtle conservation in the town of Puerto San Carlos. Amidst the festive buzz of music, games, face painting, and fried dough, the plastic turtle captured the attention of the crowd. In the following days, the turtle would give birth to a fledgling recycling programme that, one year later, has begun to alter the physical and cultural landscape of this small Mexican fishing village.

“Going to the beach, or for a walk in town, it is inevitable that some form of plastic blows around you…sometimes hitting you in the face,” said Brady Wheatley, Student Affairs Manager at The School for Field Studies. In only one week leading up to the festival, Wheatley had garnered a crew of students to haul plastic bottles to the school’s Coastal Studies Centre where she lashed them together with washed-up fishing nets into reptilian shape.

Students collected over 10,000kg of recyclables.
Students collected over 10,000kg of recyclables.

In a perfect union of symbolism and hard-hitting statistics, the display declared its message: high consumption rates in North America are polluting and destroying precious natural resources. Globally, one billion marine animals and birds die every year from eating discarded plastics.

A chance encounter with one festivalgoer proved to be the missing link that would galvanize the community and fill the gap between recognition and action. A man at the festival approached the SFS booth and offered the name of a distributor willing to truck the turtle’s plastic parts hundreds of miles away to a recycling plant in Tijuana. He also was willing to return week after week to buy the recyclables after they had been collected and purchased from local residents.

While another distributor was eventually hired, networking efforts were continually successful. To help the programme break even, the local delegado (town representative) agreed to provide an old, neglected warehouse, free of charge for three years, as a secure location to store the materials. SFS students also volunteered to take weekly shifts between their rigorous academic schedules to collect, weigh, and sort monstrous piles of aluminum, plastic, and cardboard.

By November of 2008 the programme was off to a steady start, fueling the students’ interest and drawing in locals to participate. Progress was almost thwarted, however, by a likely act of mischief.

By the summer of 2009, students had collected over 10,000 kg of recyclables. An additional 100 tons of trash had been gathered during beach cleanups where large, black garbage bags lined the shore; curiously unnatural yet impressive like small Easter Island statues.

The physical landscape of town had begun to outcompete with the litter, shifting attention back to its natural beauty. To parallel this achievement, a different sort of metamorphosis had taken place over course of the year. A new administration committee, formed by local community members and the school, had won a $7,000 grant to purchase compactors, bags, and more bins for a community outreach programme that had already been integrated into local secondary schools in early 2009. In less than a year, a project started at the hands of a few had grown and woven itself into the town’s cultural fabric.

At the eighth annual Sea Turtle Festival in August of 2009, it was obvious that sustainable community ownership was beginning to poke its head out the shell of this grassroots movement. Local children visiting the SFS booth carefully wrote environmental promises on cloth flags to later be flown in town. Among drawings of turtles and dolphins swimming freely, each flag displayed the phrase in Spanish, “I promise to recycle.”

For the full article, please click here.  Upon her success, Brady Anne continues to work with neighboring towns and cities in the area to start similar projects.  Learn more about Brady Anne, and the opportunities that helped jump start her interests in international work through Jane’s Travel Grant.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Scott Veirs on October 12, 2009 2:49 pm

    Thanks for the great story and work. I’ve certainly fretted about the preponderance of blowing plastic on my trips to Baja, but this goes well beyond my efforts to snare a few bags and bottles.

    Up here in the Pacific Northwest at Beam Reach — inspired in part by the School for Field Studies — our students undertake a service project in addition to their self-designed research projects on endangered killer whales. We have tagged creosote-logs on local beaches for clean-up, helped treat stranded marine mammals, and facilitated public education efforts at nearby shoreline parks.

    I’ll share this story with our students. I hope each successive class will stand upon the previous one’s shoulders to have the sort of long-term, meaningful impacts that Brady has managed.

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