Vacation J.E #3 Service

Harbour island during the holidays can be very touristy and packed, and with this comes a lot of maintenance needed in order to keep the island clean. It isn’t always easy to do this as we can’t be monitoring every step people make. So this vacation my dad and I decided to pick up pieces of plastic and trash on the beach that probably came from fishing boats and other industrial places and find a way to reutilize them in a sustainable way. You could tell that a lot of the trash on the beach had been sitting there for a long time because some of the plastic was worn off and starting to break apart. Plus we had seen many tourists walk right by them as if they didn’t exist, so we took matters into our own hands and picked up the trash. My dad even made a sign and put it on the beach to remind people that the beach is not a dumpster, and what amazed me too was in some places you could see a minimal effort being put into saving our environment, people were still offering plastic straws, plastic cups, etc.. and I thought to myself, some people just really don’t want to learn to be sustainable, additionally, being apart of a culture in Costa Rica that strives for being eco friendly, it just isn’t a reality for many people but I believe we need to teach them the right way even if it takes time. Plus it is important to remember that those little actions can create a change that no one would expect. Lastly to balance the positive and negative we discovered a school on the island called the green school which teaches kids to be sustainable from a young age and engage in global problems, we found that many people involved in these organizations do strive for a clean environment and have started local campaigns to raise more awareness about these global issues, which then reminded me that there is still hope even if it isn’t yet clearly apparent.