With reference to the article, ‘Of sea, sand, seaweed’ on the front page of Wednesday, 19 August, I firstly need to add to Simon Boxall’s opening sentence that seaweed has value as well.
Secondly, I was somewhat cheered by the tenor of this article, having been very distressed by the previous articles which appeared to convey the idea that our people have no idea of the value of things ‘organic’.
Why in the world would we talk about recycling and thinking ‘green’ when we week in and week out dump potential topsoil in the landfill? And when Mother Nature dumps tonnes of this potential ‘black gold’ on our beaches, where is the cooperative effort of our Agriculture Department and our Department of Environmental Health to begin a programme of composting of these commodities.
Simon is right, sand is a commodity, and I hope that some developer or contractor hasn’t taken this windfall and stored it away for personal use. But what about the seaweed? Isn’t there anyone else around who remembers the bygone days when we actually ‘backed’ this from the beaches to put around our plants in our yards? I remember my mother sending me to the beach to bring seaweed home so that she could put it around her banana suckers.
It’s time that we wake up and start utilizing this potential humus from the sea as well as the tons of vegetative waste that is discarded every week by the various garden-care companies, CUC and our supermarkets.
If our Agriculture Department and Department of Environmental Health were to collaborate on a project like this, two things would happen: One, there would be less combustible material put in the land fill; and two, there would be rich, organic compost available to be added to our farmers and gardeners.
In fact, I believe that there may still be tonnes of shredded plant material from Ivan’s havoc on our trees stacked somewhere.
With a little work, there could be a lot of good topsoil that consists of more than dug-up peat from our mangrove and buttonwood forests – and much better in quality as well.
So, let’s stop talking about recycling and begin doing it to the benefit of all of us.
M. Alson Ebanks
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