Earth Today | From waste to worth

IN THE Caribbean, the sea is never far away. It feeds families, supports tourism, connects our islands, and is woven into our way of life.

But, too often, the things we throw away also find their way there. More than 300,000 tons of plastic go uncollected in the Caribbean each year, while some coastlines record as many as 2,000 waste items per kilometre, around 80 per cent of them plastic. But, what if we stopped thinking of these materials simply as waste?

That question is at the heart of the circular economy, which keeps products and materials in use for as long as possible through reducing, reusing, repairing, recovering and recycling, rather than ‘take, use and throw away’.

Through the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund’s (CBF’s) Advancing Circular Economy (ACE) Facility, we are helping to put that idea into practice. ACE is a development project of the CBF, co-financed by the Federal Republic of Germany (German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the KfW Development Bank.

The ACE Facility targets the prevention or removal of 15,000 tons of marine litter to directly benefit at least 20,000 people. The ambition is not simply cleaner beaches and waterways, but also demonstrating that environmental protection can create economic opportunities, strengthen businesses, and support livelihoods.

In Dominica, the Great Plastic Bake Off project is developing a FUSE Kitchen to transform recovered plastic into products such as plastic lumber, with potential markets in hardware and tourism. In Saint Lucia, Searious Business is supporting a Shared Recycling Hub with three local recycling companies, while in the Dominican Republic, its reusable food-container take-back system already has 300 users. In Miches, Dominican Republic, REDDOM is working with communities, local authorities and tourism businesses to develop bankable circular-economy ventures, turning waste management into opportunities for local enterprise.

Keeping materials circulating locally can, therefore, have both environmental and economic value. When recovered materials become inputs for new products, they can also create opportunities for local collection, processing, manufacturing and small enterprises. The CBF’s ACE Facility projects are beginning to demonstrate this connection.

For coastal communities in our project intervention areas, circular approaches can also help diversify livelihoods, create new income-generating opportunities, strengthen local businesses, and retain more economic value within communities. The transition will not happen overnight. Successful circular solutions require partnerships, viable business models, supportive policies, and changes in how we produce, consume and discard materials. But, when those pieces come together, waste management can become more than a cost, it can become an opportunity for communities to create value while protecting the natural resources on which they depend.

The possibilities are significant. A discarded bottle can become raw material. A community collection system can support an enterprise. A reusable container can replace countless disposable ones. Multiplied across our communities and islands, these changes can mean cleaner coastlines, stronger local enterprises, new livelihood opportunities, and healthier Caribbean seas.

So, the next time we hold something over a rubbish bin, perhaps we should ask not only, “Where do I throw this away?” but also: “What could this become, and who could benefit?”

Contributed by Rachel Ramsey, CBF Nature-based Economies programme manager.