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Dominica’s shoreline is awash in trash. Four times
a day, the ebb and flow of the tide washes a
distinct line of waste closer to shore, further
from shore, closer to shore, further from shore.
You can practically navigate by it.
The newest additions to this man-made tide line are
black plastic grocery bags, the kind that might have
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
printed on them if they weren’t so black. Among the
bags are Styrofoam takeaway containers and plastic, 20ounce
soda bottles. And diapers.
Conversely, mangoes literally fall from the sky. An inconceivable
number of exotic fruit grows everywhere and
freely on the island. Fresh, life-giving water flows from
365 rivers (“one for each day of the year,” the locals are
fond of saying) down mountain slopes that Columbus
once described by crumpling up a piece of paper and
tossing it onto the table. You can drink your belly full
while going for a swim in the highlands. On Dominica,
snacks come in their own wrappers — grilled plantains
hot and fresh off the coals at the Roseau market, pieces
of local bread wrapped in banana leaves, coconut water
in its own cup.
And yet in a place where it would be so easy to be
“green,” the island is threatened with environmental
ruin. My favorite eatery, the Fish Pot, just south of Roseau,
now serves your choice of the fresh catch, only
hours from the ocean, fried or steamed, on a Styrofoam
plate to be eaten with a disposable plastic fork
and thrown in the gutter when it’s empty. It’s hard to
blame the locals — oftentimes, the “third world” will
adopt the wastefulness of the “first,” and by the time
we’ve become enlightened (long after we’ve ruined
our own lands), they’re just getting started.
But not everyone contributes negatively. Peter Horner
has been working in the yachting industry for years,
and in one position as mate onboard a 130-foot private
schooner, Pete was in charge of the garbage. He
dubbed himself, appropriately, the “trash man.” They
first set off from Newport, Rhode Island, sailing south
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