Melange Travel & Lifestyle Magazine July 2020 | Page 132

This is a glass recycling
and plastic reduction
initiative supported
by Scuba Montserrat
Dive Shop and the Darwin
Initiative. Glass is collected
from local businesses and
residents on the island, and it is
then crushed, on-island.
The initiative started March
2019 with glass bottles being
collected from events during the
island’s St. Patrick’s Day festival.
The Eco Montserrat team also
started giving bags to local
bars & restaurants which these
businesses would use to collect
bottles and some were given
large grey bins into which the
contents of the bags would be
put.
The next step was to add
residential drop points, so areas
were created where locals could
drop off their glass products
which would then be collected.
Crushed glass is currently being
given away to people for use in
art and crafts projects and as
building material. The project
team want people to experiment
with it and find uses for it.
Montserrat is an island, therefore
a lot of their trash is burned.
The project team realized that
over 100,000,000 bottles were
being thrown away each year
and the Dive Shop team were
picking up many of these under
the sea on their dives. Also
as other countries started to
ban plastic bags, they realized
that Montserrat had not even
started the conversation on
the island. “People needed to
know what plastic alternatives
might look like, why things like
Styrofoam and taking a plastic
bag to carry a candy bar is bad
for our environment and us as
humans. So we started recyling
the glass and this year our big
push is the plastics,” said Eco
Montserrat. “We are bringing in
paper and metal straws, bamboo