Sun, sea and trash: The Caribbean islands struggling with managing waste

Tourism is vital for economies across the Caribbean, but record-breaking numbers of visitors, coupled with insufficient local waste facilities, are leaving many islands choking on rubbish.

The smell hits you first. Then there is the assault of flies, the swirling dust, the grit that gets in your eyes. And finally, you see the vast expanse of trash.

Antigua’s landfill site is one place that is not listed in the tourism brochures. And it has been overcapacity for more than a decade.

A short distance away, behemoth cruise ships dwarf the island’s capital city St John’s. Often more than 10 per week.

Each one will discharge thousands of passengers eager to experience the island’s rustic charm. The huge vessels will also offload some of their rubbish. Sometimes several tonnes per call.

Antigua’s landfill has received more than 1,200 tonnes of rubbish from cruise ships this year alone, official figures leaked.

The cruise ships follow international rules on waste and recycling. But as ship and passenger numbers in the Caribbean have risen to record highs, there is simply much more rubbish and recycling being offloaded in Caribbean ports.

This, in turn, is putting pressure on inadequate and under-resourced local waste management and recycling systems.

“There have been no significant improvements to the way we manage waste over the past 10 years,” laments David Spencer, a former manager of Antigua’s solid waste management authority.

Since the island’s landfill site opened two decades ago, he says that no additional contained waste areas have been created at the facility. These are spaces lined with synthetic, protective material to prevent leakage into the surrounding ground. Instead, Spencer says, fresh garbage, be it from the island’s own waste or the cruise ships, has been piled ever more on top of the existing area, creating a large hill.

One current worker tells the BBC that the area contained within the protective sheeting has been full since 2012. “It disturbs me a lot,” he admits. “It’s mind blowing to see the volumes of rubbish.”

He adds that as much of the waste, which is compressed and buried, is now outside the lined area. “You can only imagine the damage to the environment.”

The current boss of the solid waste management authority, Danley Philip, says efforts are afoot to transform the landfill into an “efficient waste management system”.

“We plan to get technicians with experience to manage it properly because currently it’s really just a dump with very little sorting,” he admits.

The environment minister of Antigua and Barbuda did not respond to a request for comment, but Philip says government investment in new equipment, plus international funding to convert old tyres into asphalt for roads, are on the horizon. Authorities are currently also upgrading the landfill’s bumpy access road.

The problems in Antigua are reflected across the Caribbean, which is often described as the world’s most tourism-dependent region. Last year 33.7 million people visited the Caribbean via cruise ships, while a further 34.2 million holidayed in the region for one night or more.

Tourism supports almost three million jobs and accounts for more than two-thirds of some islands’ economies.

In the Cayman Islands, despite a focus on recycling, reuse and reduction initiatives, its landfill continues to grow.

Locals wryly refer to it as “Mount Trashmore”, with a whopping 130,000 tonnes of garbage added to it last year, according to a Cayman news outlet that made a freedom of information request.

It is a stone’s throw from where Zara Majid, of youth activist group Protect Our Future, goes to school.

“Our waste management system is not as adequate as we would like, and we don’t have enough recycling,” she explains. “In the Cayman Islands, like most Caribbean islands, our environment is what our livelihoods are built on and our tourism industry is a large part of our island culture.

“Every piece of waste a tourist leaves behind has an impact – and every choice they make helps not only our present, but our future.”

Katherine Ebanks-Wilks, the Cayman Islands’ Minister for Health, Environment and Sustainability, recently described the British territory’s waste crisis as a “matter of national importance”. She pledged to prioritise solutions while urging householders to reduce garbage.

Last year, Jamaica welcomed 2.9 million stopover tourists, a similar figure to its entire population, making it the Caribbean’s second most-visited destination behind the Dominican Republic.

Jamaica still sends the vast majority of its million-plus tonnes of annual rubbish to basic disposal sites, in the absence of sanitary landfill facilities, although the government has announced plans to create waste-to-energy plants.

In Turks and Caicos, local environmental expert Kathleen McNary describes the management of waste as “frightful”. Smog from frequent fires, usually started by spontaneous combustion, has plagued nearby residents for years.

The territory’s government has announced plans to transform the landfill on the main island of Providenciales into a recycling and waste export facility.

Carnival Cruise Line, which opened a $50m (£37m) complex in Turks and Caicos’ capital island Grand Turk in 2006, prides itself on its recycling endeavours across the Caribbean destinations it visits. It is currently rolling out an ambitious programme to collect much of Grand Turk’s general waste too, to export for recycling.

Gemma Handy

Royal Caribbean, which operates the world’s largest cruise ships, says all of its vessels today are “equipped to be landfill-free”. And a spokesperson for TUI Cruises says the company “avoids offloading to ports that can only send waste to landfill” and is “mindful that small islands often have limited waste-handling capacities”.

Most Caribbean countries are signatories to the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) Marpol convention, which governs ship waste and pollution. Although just 30% of them have implemented accompanying legislation, the IMO says.

The IMO’s regional coordinator Vivian Rambarath-Parasram says most ship-generated sewage and garbage in the Caribbean is treated and collected in Miami. She notes that while there are “pockets of capacity” in the Caribbean, it is largely inadequate with infrastructure unmaintained.

Back in Antigua, the landfill site’s shortcomings translate to benefits for some. On any given day, more than a dozen people, dubbed “pickers”, rake through the garbage for salvageable items to sell. “Anytime the cruise ship waste trucks come in, the pickers will be there,” one worker at the landfill says. “There’s often almost new chairs and clothes among the waste.”

Pieces of copper from old appliances discarded by householders is also a good find, fetching more than $1 per pound (454g) when resold.

Pickers can generally expect to earn at least $40 (£29.50) a day. The worker adds: “People come here because they don’t have work. This way they can eat and provide for their family.”