Landfill Looms Large in 2017

Date

It’s the time of year when the dump fills beyond capacity, as shown in the recent aerial photograph by Graham Swindell.

Why is the dump overflowing again? Briefly, the garbage is mounting because there’s simply no place for it to go. Last year’s “Clean up the Dump” campaign was stopped because the Nicoya Municipality expanded the route of the dumpster truck that had been coming to Nosara, and that expansion precluded the truck from continuing its trips to Nosara. The alternative truck, Carrillo, which delivers material to Nosara, cannot make it up the hill to the Santa Cruz landfill.

While we wait for Santa Cruz to finish its second, larger dump site, the garbage in the Nosara dump continues to increase, at a seemingly exponential pace. The most practical measure will be a technical closure once the Municipality starts collecting our trash, now scheduled for April. In other words, during the busiest season of the year, the garbage will continue to glut the landfill.

So please do your part to minimize the garbage you send there. You’ve heard this song before: Compost your organic waste. Separate recyclables, and put them in clear plastic bags next to your garbage bin every Tuesday night or Wednesday early morning. Encourage your friends and neighbors, and the places you shop and eat, to do the same.

Did you know that the Recycling Center now has a mechanical glass crusher and a compactor for plastic and cardboard?

Now that there’s a pilot project to buy recyclables and cart them away from Nosara, the more we sort, the sooner it leaves. If you miss the Wednesday collection, you can deliver recyclables to the Recycling Center seven days a week.

Beyond that, Nosara Recicla urges you to look for ways to use more environment-friendly resources. You can start by buying beverages in cans and glass bottles instead of plastic. Some supermarkets sell drinks in returnable bottles, but they’re not on display, so you need to ask for them.

While you’re at it, don’t buy bottled water at all. Invest in a stainless steel canister and fill it from your tap or home filtration system.

For more ideas on how to curb your consumption of plastic, look here: myplasticfreelife.com/plasticfreeguide

More
articles