Announcing a New & Different Blog - Meet the Green Team!

[Keith R]

Thanks, Trina. I hope we keep your interest. Not all our entries will be as mind-blowing as Alan's -- I expect many of mine to be quite dry! -- but hopefully, taken together, will provide a more complete picture and stimulate ideas and discussion in every direction possible.

And I know I sound like a broken record by now, but folks, anyone willing and able to contribute in the spirit of the blog is welcome to join the Team!

[Larry]

Keith and co., I love the blog. Looking forward to reading more entries.

Larry

[2dlight]

This blog is now part of my required-reading list. Although not in vogue, making an effort to effect some positive change in the DR is better than just pointing out everything that is wrong with/in the country. Carlos.

[trina]

Originally Posted by Keith R

Thanks, Trina. I hope we keep your interest. Not all our entries will be as mind-blowing as Alan's -- I expect many of mine to be quite dry! -- but hopefully, taken together, will provide a more complete picture and stimulate ideas and discussion in every direction possible.

And I know I sound like a broken record by now, but folks, anyone willing and able to contribute in the spirit of the blog is welcome to join the Team!

It is so very strange, I didn't see your blog until this morning...this past weekend, I was wondering to myself whether or not, in say, 50 years or so , the Dominican Republic would ever have a recycling program. Mandatory Recycling is becoming a reality in Calgary, so it made me think of this, and subsequentially, of course, of you. I'd love to read yours or one of the team members thoughts on what it would take to bring the DR around to this way of thinking. OMG...imagine the huelgas that would rock the nation if mandatory recycling were to become a reality.

[Chirimoya]

There is a reasonable amount of informal recycling, with botelleros and cartoneros, scrap metal dealers, but nothing systematic and structured.

[trina]

Originally Posted by Chirimoya

There is a reasonable amount of informal recycling, with botelleros and cartoneros, scrap metal dealers, but nothing systematic and structured.

Thanks, Chiri. I knew they had bottle and metal recyclers, but I am wondering how much they are utilized and accepted. I think the DR probably has a long way to go, in this respect. However, maybe it's a ridiculous notion to ask the same people who use their streets as a garbage dump to actually recycle. I look forward to your piece on the blog!

[Keith R]

Trust me, Trina, I plan to say alot on the issues of waste and recycling in the DR. As you may know from this Forum in the past or my website, these issues are personal passions of mine!

I'm just trying as much as possible to give the other Team members a crack at their entries and issues first, rather than hog the spotlight.

[Keith R]

Somebody's got to try!

This new entry to the Green Team blog is not as sexy as Alan's , but hopefully still provides some food for thought:

"Open Wide and Say Ahhhhhhhhh...."

http://dr1.com/blogs/?u=environment

[Mirador]

Originally Posted by trina

... I was wondering to myself whether or not, in say, 50 years or so , the Dominican Republic would ever have a recycling program. ...

Did you know that recycling in the DR goes way back, to the aboriginal Taino population? The Taino women recycled their broken earthenware pots to make new ones. The broken pots were crushed and mixed with clay and fired in an open fire, where the pots were arranged on the ground and firewood was heaped on top. Actually, if they used pure clay to make the pots, they would crack while cooking. There are places south of San Juan de la Maguana, where the top soil is actually not soil but particles of earthenware.

[Keith R]

Thanks, Mirador, I'm going to use that factoid sometime!

Yeah, recycling is not new. It's been practiced in one way or another by different cultures almost as long as mankind's been around. Even "modern recycling" is not new -- for instance, you can find examples of it in early 20th century in Brazil and plenty of it during WW-II in the US.

In the DR, there have been botelleros for decades, if not longer. Most have long collected and sold the Presidente beer bottles back to Cerveceria Nacional -- yes, Presidente has been practicing a form of reuse/recycling for a long time.

Cardboard and paper recycling is incredibly small in the DR, considering how much both are used and the large percentage of the material that must be imported at substantial cost.

Plastic recycling is yet to happen on any appreciable scale in the DR, even though plastic waste is accumulating fast.

As for tires, wood pallets, metals, construction wastes... oops, was about to give away the contents of a future Green Team blog! Can't do that! LOL