Around the world in 80 days – Travelling Trash finds its way to TCI shores

By Dana Malcolm 

Staff Writer 

June 19, 2023 – Somewhere in Europe a fisherman’s garbage has been tossed into the ocean. You’ll never guess where it washes up.

‘No man is an island’, it’s an old adage that is supposed to be comforting but can also be a warning for residents on land and how our poor environmental practices can have far reaching and frankly shocking effects on other people.

Grand Turk is now suffering from an incredible inflow of garbage, thousands of containers and similar refuse in disgusting clumps; the DECR tells us it didn’t come from home and it’s not the first time this has happened.

“This particular situation is more on the windward side of Grand Turk and would be on the eastern side of all islands and cays due to the direction of the wind and the current and what this is is a product of dumping somewhere else in the world,” Amy Avenant, Environmental Outreach Coordinator at the DECR told us.

But that’s not all.

“It is not directly linked to the Turks and Caicos but it is a very good example of how our activity on land somewhere else impacts communities far away from us. For example we may not have confirmed it in this particular situation but in the past in Middle Caicos we have found octopus traps that have washed up from Spain,” she explained.

Avenant says garbage has traveled to the Turks and Caicos from even further.

“We get waste that washes up from fishing vessels in South-East Asia based on the packaging, so it’s an unfortunate symptom of the way we treat our planet.”

It’s not fair to Grand Turk residents who must now gather in the sun and clean away what is described as miles of wet smelly rubbish, but it raises another important question, where does the Turks and Caicos’ garbage go?

The country undoubtedly has a garbage disposal issue as well, our packages choke drains, litter roadsides and mangroves and very likely eventually make their way to the ocean. Where are our piles, small as they may be, washing up? Who is cleaning up after us?

The DECR says in order to cut the problem we have to dispose of our garbage properly and as a country make sure that garbage stays out of our natural spaces and our oceans.