As someone had the inspiration to start a category on the Environment (bravo), I thought that it may be a good platform for people to share their ideas to limit unnecessary waste.

Here are a few that may have been mentioned before but are worth repeating for new visitors and posters.

1: Take your used batteries home with you. Disposing them on Bonaire means that they end up on landfill, seap into the ground and end up as a snack for the goats.
2: Bring Tupperware containers with you for takeaways. All of the snack-bars serve their food in Styrofoam boxes which are everywhere. Instead, ask them to use your own container.
3: When brushing your teeth, turn off the tap (faucet) between brushes. Why run the water continuously?
4: In the shower. Wet yourself and turn off the water while you lather up.
5: Don't leave electrical appliances on when not in your room. ESPECIALLY THE AIR-CON!.

Energy & water production are hideously expensive on Bonaire as Diesel generators are used to power the island. Please use sparingly.

These are just a few but I am sure that you have many more to post.

Take your plastic home (back to the country you came from, not to the place you are staying on island). You can squish it, stuff it, stash it and then when you get home trash it responsibly.

Use as little plastic as possible. Bring a Nalgene and fill it with the wonderful Bonaire tap water.

Hi, Mo & Antony! I saved up all of our plastic waste from this recent trip in order to bring it home with us to recycle here in the states....I had it all rinsed and ready to be packed into the bag when the cleaning staff at the Divi guessed it might be "trash" one day while we were snorkeling and she took it away....we did not realize this until about 8 hours after she did it so we could not go back and "reclaim" our plastic waste.

I felt so terrible...here I tried to pitch in and remove the plastic waste materials and someone went and "took" them away and burst my bubble!

We did bring back everything else back with us, however.

Great tips and suggestions, Antony. Carole

Shall we cut and paste when we add on so we have an ever growing list?
1: Take your used batteries home with you. Disposing them on Bonaire means that they end up on landfill, seep into the ground and end up as a snack for the goats.
2: Bring Tupperware containers with you for takeaways. All of the snack-bars serve their food in Styrofoam boxes which are everywhere. Instead, ask them to use your own container.
3: When brushing your teeth, turn off the tap (faucet) between brushes. Why run the water continuously?
4: In the shower. Wet yourself and turn off the water while you lather up.
5: Don't leave electrical appliances on when not in your room. ESPECIALLY THE AIR-CON!.
6: When getting ice cream, get a cone rather than a plastic cup & spoon.
7: Don't buy styrofoam coolers. Pack your own collapsible one in your luggage.

Good idea Natalie.
1: Take your used batteries home with you. Disposing them on Bonaire means that they end up on landfill, seep into the ground and end up as a snack for the goats.
2: Bring Tupperware containers with you for takeaways. All of the snack-bars serve their food in Styrofoam boxes which are everywhere. Instead, ask them to use your own container.
3: When brushing your teeth, turn off the tap (faucet) between brushes. Why run the water continuously?
4: In the shower. Wet yourself and turn off the water while you lather up.
5: Don't leave electrical appliances on when not in your room. ESPECIALLY THE AIR-CON!.
6: When getting ice cream, get a cone rather than a plastic cup & spoon.
7: Don't buy styrofoam coolers. Pack your own collapsible one in your luggage
8: Instead of taking a few one week visits a year, reduce your carbon footprint by taking one longer trip.
9: Divers, see if you can get together with others to share a vehicle. I always see lines of pick-ups along the coast with two people in each.
10: Drink draught beer rather than bottled where possible. Some companies (I think Polar) do not recycle.

1: Take your used batteries home with you. Disposing them on Bonaire means that they end up on landfill, seep into the ground and end up as a snack for the goats.
2: Bring Tupperware containers with you for takeaways. All of the snack-bars serve their food in Styrofoam boxes which are everywhere. Instead, ask them to use your own container.
3: When brushing your teeth, turn off the tap (faucet) between brushes. Why run the water continuously?
4: In the shower. Wet yourself and turn off the water while you lather up.
5: Don't leave electrical appliances on when not in your room. ESPECIALLY THE AIR-CON!.
6: When getting ice cream, get a cone rather than a plastic cup & spoon.
7: Don't buy styrofoam coolers. Pack your own collapsible one in your luggage
8: Instead of taking a few one week visits a year, reduce your carbon footprint by taking one longer trip.
9: Divers, see if you can get together with others to share a vehicle. I always see lines of pick-ups along the coast with two people in each.
10: Drink draught beer rather than bottled where possible. Some companies (I think Polar) do not recycle.
11: Use as little plastic as possible and take as much of what you do use home in your luggage for recycling at home.
12: Bring a re-usable water container to the island and fill it daily with wonderful Bonaire tap water. Don't buy bottled water on Bonaire - it's a waste of money and resources to bottle it and transport it to Bonaire all for water quality that is likely not as good as Bonaire tap water.

Good stuff everyone but I feel compelled to comment about bringing the recyclable material back to the US. Please understand that a lot of recycling does not happen in the US. Companies ship it to China and the situation there is deplorable. Your overall best solution is to reduce the waste you create. You can do this by purchasing items in less packaging. You can also recycle your own paper by making home made stationary or wrapping paper out of it. Etc...

Carry on with your list!

One other point: don't drink bottled water anywhere in the civilized world, not just Bonaire. It's a triple-header: useless, wasteful, and expensive. It consumes energy to create a polluting container, consumes energy for trucks to carry the polluting containers full of water, energy for trucks to carry the empties. If your municipal water isn't good enough to drink, work to fix that. If people would fund their municipal water companies at anywhere near the money they spend on buying bottled water, those municipal plants could create the same quality of water for everyone at a much lower price and with much less environmental impact.

Tell that to the families of the six people who died in Walkerton Ontario a couple of years back. There had been many warnings and yet no one with authority did anything.

It's definitely a catch 22. However the reality is that tap water is not the safest source, specially for anyone with medical conditions who cannot easily recover from when quality standards are not respected.

Yes, but, you can filter tap water, you can reverse osmosis process tap water, and have your tap water tested, and have much less impact by doing so. And filtering the stuff is basically what the water companies do.

Let's keep this thread focused on specific suggestions for Bonaire visitors to minimize their negative impact on Bonaire. If others want to address broader issues, perhaps a different thread should be started for that. I'm hoping there are more good suggestions that can be added to the list. Not all of us will think every idea is good/practical, but every small step helps.

1: Take your used batteries home with you. Disposing them on Bonaire means that they end up on landfill, seep into the ground and end up as a snack for the goats.
2: Bring Tupperware containers with you for take-away food. All of the snack-bars serve their food in Styrofoam boxes which are everywhere. Instead, ask them to use your own container.
3: When brushing your teeth, turn off the tap (faucet) between brushes. Why run the water continuously?
4: In the shower. Wet yourself and turn off the water while you lather up.
5: Don't leave electrical appliances on when not in your room. ESPECIALLY THE AIR-CON!.
6: When getting ice cream, get a cone rather than a plastic cup & spoon.
7: Don't buy styrofoam coolers. Pack your own collapsible cooler in your luggage.
8: Instead of taking a few one week visits a year, reduce your carbon footprint by taking one longer trip.
9: Divers, see if you can get together with others to share a vehicle. I always see lines of pick-ups along the coast with two people in each.
10: Drink draught beer rather than bottled where possible. Some companies (I think Polar) do not recycle.
11: Use as little plastic as possible and take as much of what you do use home in your luggage for recycling at home.
12: Bring a re-usable water container to the island and fill it daily with wonderful Bonaire tap water. Don't buy bottled water on Bonaire - it's a waste of money and resources to bottle it and transport it to Bonaire all for water quality that is likely not as good as Bonaire tap water.
13: Buy one of the good sturdy reusable grocery bags at Warehouse to use for groceries during your stay and take it home for use there.

No reason to single out Polar. Amstel used reusable bottles when it brewed the beer on Curacao, but now uses a disposable bottle. The Belgian imports all come in reusable bottles, but there is no mechanism to return the bottles to Belgium, so no one handles the deposits. Balashi is the only brand of beer that comes in a reusable bottle that can actually be reused.

All the other glass can be recycled, and is being collected for recycling. The last I heard, the actual recycling equipment had not been obtained, but the glass is being kept separate from all other trash so that it can be processed when the equipment is available.

Kevin, do you know how they separate it? After it's gone to the dump? We just returned from Jamaica, and they don't recycle plastic, but they do recycle glass. When we drank beer, wine, etc. from glass bottles, we collected them in one are of the room. When the cleaning gals came through, it was easy for them to collect and separate from the rest of the trash.

I know our last trip to Bon, we asked about recycling, they said "no, it's not done." We still separated our stuff each day, I'm sure it didn't make a difference.

It would be nice to know what the resorts and hotels are doing, if they are separating or just dumping it all together.

natalie, good ideas, on the brushing the teeth, that should be done everywhere! I know at work we are trying to cut down on our plastic use, so we are bringing in our own dishes to use rather than using paper and plastic wear.

We usually by a case of water when we get to Bon and recycle the bottles as they are used. One concern I now have however, is the use of Bispheonal A in water bottles, and other plastics. Some water bottles are toxic once they get hot. Bad Plastics

Commercial establishments are provided with bright yellow separate glass bins. It isn't done at the residential level. Most businesses don't mind if you put glass into their yellow bin. Most will get really pissed if you put trash into their yellow bin.

Kevin, Great Tip!!! For those who do recycle by using some of the resorts yellow plastic bins, just remeber, Please do not put the cardboard boxes, or paper bags in the bins. Also for those residents, please do not place your cardboard, bags, or trash in the resort trash containers.

Kevin.

Good news about the impending glass recycling. I did here something about it a while back and how maybe it was to be used in construction.

Being a fan of Belashi, it is good to see that they are recycling the bottles. Apart from The Great Escape and Spanhoek, it wasn't the easiest beer to get.

I know Divi carries Balashi as well. As for reusing the bottles, it's a simple matter of economics for an island brewery. When I looked into setting up a brewery on Bonaire, it quickly became obvious that the single largest expense would be shipping containers full of empty bottles around. Reusables cut that cost by nearly 70%. It's not true for a remote brewery: if you have to container ship the empties back to Holland, you boost your operational costs by 30-40% over simply throwing them away and making new ones. That's why Amstel shifted from reusables to disposables. Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao are close enough together that Balashi still saves money by shipping the empties back and refilling them.

As far as I know, Balashi is no longer going to be available on Bonaire. The local supplier said the shipping is way to expensive..so..Remember, Aruba is another country.

Bonaire has people who will help you with your waste batteries.
But why is it that in other places and islands, who have even less than we do
that their government have banned the import of not recyclable goods.
No plastic bottles and no plastic bags.
It’s all a simple law, if you don’t bring it in you don’t have to get rid of it.
If Bonaire has any hart for nature on our planet, this would be a good start.
But then again, Bonaire did make its stands where it wants to be and it has noting to do with being environment friendly but with becoming an island in a chain of Caribbean islands, not more and not less.

See attached an article from Jul. 13, 2008 Boston Globe which includes some Ecological Sanitation examples:
http://www.boston.com

Waste? Not

We all produce a rich resource in our homes and then spend millions of dollars to throw it away. A new movement says there are smarter ways to
think about waste.

By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow | July 13, 2008

IN A WORLD of rapidly diminishing resources, there's one we tend to overlook. It's easy to produce and extremely abundant. But instead of viewing it as an embarrassment of riches, we're more likely to see it as just an embarrassment.
This neglected treasure is human waste. Urine is rich in nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, the three main ingredients in artificial fertilizer. Feces contains these nutrients, too, in smaller doses, and the methane it produces can be harnessed as biogas, a green energy source.
Yet in most cultures, understandably, the first impulse is not to use waste wisely, but to get rid of it as quickly as possible. In many rural, undeveloped areas, people simply "go" in the bush, or by the closest river. In advanced industrialized societies, we flush it away.
Both methods - and several others between the extremes - pose problems that grow more conspicuous every day. As the developing world has grown more crowded and urban, the lack of adequate sanitation has become a public health crisis. In America and other developed countries, the system works much more smoothly, but uses enormous quantities of clean water - about 4,000 gallons per person each year - and requires massive amounts of energy and money to treat the resulting sewage.
But now a growing global movement aims to make sanitation more sustainable by changing how both rich and poor countries think about human waste - recasting it as a valuable resource that is most costly when thrown away. Following a philosophy known as ecological sanitation, or "ecosan," and fueled by a convergence of factors - the rising prices of energy and artificial fertilizer, increasing worries about food security, and concern for the environment - the push to reform sanitation has gained currency around the
world, driving innovations from toilet design to farming practices. And some sanitation reformers say they are even making headway into the most vexing question: How to get people to see promise in a substance they are taught from birth to find revolting.
"There's been a lot of resistance and disbelief that anything like this can work," says Mayling Simpson-Hebert, a technical adviser with Catholic Relief Services in East Africa. "That seems to be changing."
Simpson-Hebert has helped to introduce a toilet called the arborloo - in which a fruit tree seedling is planted in a waste-filled pit - to thousands of Ethiopian farmers in the past few years. Numerous other projects are underway in the rest of the developing world. And the idea has started to gain traction in the developed world as well. In Europe, recent years have seen the advent of "urine diversion" toilets, which separate the two kinds of waste in order to treat it more efficiently, among other benefits. Locally, a private school in Weston has installed flushless compost toilets manufactured by Clivus Multrum, a company based in Lawrence. And several European pilot projects have begun to experiment with vacuum-biogas toilets, which require very little water and turn waste into energy.
Not everyone shares the enthusiasm for these sanitation technologies. Skeptics point to the cost, health concerns, and challenge of changing deeply ingrained habits and beliefs. Depending on the particular kind of system, the changes could entail a different experience of the toilet, or a different attitude toward the waste, or both.
For some proponents of sanitation reform in developed countries, that's part of the point: changing everyday behavior is going to be key to solving our ecological crises. According to Arno Rosemarin, research and communications manager at the Stockholm Environment Institute, our current "flush and forget" system makes it too easy to ignore the repercussions of waste disposal. If we are going to make meaningful changes in our environmental impact, the reasoning goes, perhaps we should start by thinking differently about the emissions that we ourselves produce.
. . .
The idea of recycling our faeces and urine may seem surprising, and perhaps disgusting, but the concept is hardly new. China and Japan have long traditions of re-using human waste as fertilizer. Even in England,as recently as the 19th century, "nightmen" would take human waste from backyards to sell to farmers.
But that was before the British "sanitation revolution." Exactly 150 years ago this summer, the river Thames in London overflowed with human waste in what was known as the Great Stink, forcing Parliament, located on the banks of the Thames, to take action. Sewers were subsequently installed, eventually resulting in major public health advances.
The flush toilet and its infrastructure have since become standard throughout the developed world. Excreta flow out of sight to a sewer system, and then to a waste treatment plant. In more remote areas, the sewage goes to nearby septic tanks that must be periodically emptied. The system's benefits are obvious, but it also has downsides that are growing increasingly apparent.
Annually, each of us produces about 13 gallons of faeces and 130 gallons of urine, which is instantly diluted into the 4,000 gallons we use to flush it. This large quantity of contaminated liquid further mixes with "greywater," the water from the laundry, shower, and sink, tripling or quadrupling the amount of water that must be treated as sewage in energy-intensive plants. In effect, the system takes a relatively small amount
of pathogenic material - primarily the feces - and taints enormous amounts of water with it.

Especially in regions struggling with freshwater scarcity, many observers have come to see this system as highly inefficient. "It's a totally insane idea," says Rosemarin.
In this model, it's not only water that's wasted, critics say - it's also the valuable nutrients in the feces and urine, notably phosphorous. Global fertilizer prices have tripled in the last year, partly due to a shortage of phosphorus, which some see as a looming crisis. Against this background, some argue that it would be folly not to capitalize on the plentiful phosphorus in human waste. In the same vein, the methane it generates has the potential to provide cheap, renewable energy.
Rose George, author of a forthcoming book about sanitation, "The Big Necessity," says of the
conventional system, "It was a solution 150 years ago and it was a very good one, but it should evolve."
Over the past couple of decades, some measures have already begun to exploit the value of waste and improve the system's efficiency. It has become common for treatment plants to convert some of the methane generated by sludge into biogas to partially power their own plants. Low-flush toilets and waterless urinals are small steps to conserve water. And the practice of using treated sludge - renamed "biosolids" - as chemical fertilizer has become customary in parts of the developed world. In the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, about 50 percent of all biosolids are being recycled to land. The Massachusetts Water Resources Authority turns all of its sludge into fertilizer, some
of which it sells commercially through a contractor and some of which it gives to communities.
But ecosan advocates assail this practice as unsustainable and unsafe. Under the current system, household waste mixes with industrial waste, including toxic materials. Although the EPA has issued treatment regulations, and the MWRA defends the safety of its fertilizer, there are concerns about the impact of sludge-derived products on soil and human health.
The most radical visionaries of this movement would apply the same principles to sanitation that we have begun to apply to other garbage in our homes. Just as we separate plastic, cardboard, and newspaper, says Rosemarin, we should separate urine, feces, and greywater.
As a first step down this road, some companies are producing new types of toilets. One idea, pioneered in Sweden, is known as urine diversion. The basic concept is that the toilet has two receptacles for the different kinds of waste. "Don't mix what God separates," says Steven Sugden, a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who has worked on sanitation projects in Africa.
The benefits of taking urine out of the waste stream are clear: Urine makes up less than 1 percent of all waste water in developed countries, but contains a huge proportion of the nitrogen and phosphorus. Those nutrients are essential to agriculture but harmful in water bodies, and removing them is the most energy intensive
part of treating waste water. And since urine is almost sterile, it can be used as fertilizer with little to no treatment.
In Europe and Australia, there have been numerous experiments with different kinds of urine-diversion toilets. The Swedish company Roediger sells one called the NoMix, with a back compartment that functions like a standard flush toilet and a front compartment for urine - essentially a conventional toilet with a built-in urinal. First developed in the 1990s, these and other urine-diversion toilets have gradually
begun to be used in Sweden, and a few municipalities have taken responsibility for collecting the urine.
Vacuum toilets, much like those on airplanes, are also gaining currency. These typically require less than a quart of water per flush. A promising innovation is the vacuum-biogas toilet, in which waste is sucked into a vacuum sewer system, and then transferred to a local biogas plant. Recent pilot projects have tried this technology in settlements in Holland and Germany. Hamburg is in the planning phase for a project that would give vacuum-biogas toilets to 2,000 houses, according to Ralf Otterpohl, director of that city's
Institute of Wastewater Management and Water Protection. He says the water utility is considering converting the city to this system over the next 50 years.
Perhaps the simplest mechanism is a compost toilet, such as those made by Clivus Multrum. The toilets look normal from the outside, but inside, the waste drops into a dark hole. A ventilation system pulls air down to prevent odor. In the space below, the liquid and solid waste separate. The liquid can be used immediately as fertilizer, while the solid waste is stored for at least one year - with monthly raking and the addition of pine shavings - and then is ready to be harvested as compost.
"It works like your garden compost pile," says Don Mills, the company's sales director. "It's low-tech, it's no-tech. We're just employing a process that is one of the essential processes in nature."
Mills says the company sells mainly to parks, green buildings, and nature centers. A private school in Weston, the Cambridge School, recently installed the toilets in its new green building. Last year, similar Clivus toilets were installed at the Bronx Zoo, avoiding the need to build a large septic system or expensive sewerage, and saving over a million gallons of water a year.
There are, however, obstacles to widespread implementation of unorthodox toilets. Space limitations make compost toilets infeasible in most urban areas. Vacuum toilets require a different plumbing system. And there may be psychological barriers to changing habits in the bathroom.
For urine diversion, men would have to sit to urinate toward the front of the toilet. Although its proponents offer assurances that it's easy for women to use, some critics question that assertion. "For a guy, that's not too technically challenging," says Eddy Perez, a sanitation specialist at the World Bank. "But you've go women of different sizes. It's just pretty complicated from a human behavior, human physiology
perspective." Aiming could also pose problems for children.
Transforming the sanitation system in the developed world "can be done," says author Rose George, "but it would basically require revolution."
. . .
Partly due to the lack of infrastructure, it's in the developing world where the biggest changes have so far taken place. The problems there are quite different. Due to the lack of proper sanitation facilities, diseases caused by ingested fecal matter are rampant; diarrhea, for example, kills more children than AIDS. But the
advantages of the ecosan approach are similar, because a well-designed system allows people to harvest the benefits of waste. And given the poverty and food insecurity, these benefits are often more acutely felt.
A popular kind of toilet is called the fossa alterna, in which two 3-meter-deep pit latrines are dug side by side. Once one is filled, after about a year, it is sealed off, and the other one is used. Eventually, the waste in the first pit will be ready to be retrieved - after time, the pathogens die off - and used or sold as fertilizer
for crops. Some sanitation experts worry about health risks: If the waste is touched too soon, the toilet could exacerbate the problems it's intended to help solve. But a growing number of rural residents in Zimbabwe, Malawi, and other countries have started to prize the product they reap.
A more sophisticated system, used most often in urban areas, allows groups of families, as well as
schools, to produce their own biogas. To create biogas, vegetable scraps and grass and human excreta are collected in a pit. They produce methane, which is captured in a tube and channelled to a kitchen stove or shower. The UN is involved in such projects in India and Senegal, among other places.
One of the most successful efforts has unfolded in Ethiopia. Starting in 2005, Catholic Relief Services introduced a toilet called the arborloo to extremely poor Ethiopian farmers. "All of the other toilet options we had introduced over the years had failed," says Mayling Simpson-Hebert.
The arborloo is a shallow pit latrine that costs only $5. When it's filled, the farmer plants a fruit tree seedling. The farmers are given two seedlings, one to plant in the arborloo, and another as a control. The comparison enables them to observe that the one in the arborloo grows much faster and produces more fruit. The farmers can eat the fruit and sell it on the market. Today more than 26,000 farmers are using
these toilets, according to Simpson-Hebert, with strong support from the Ethiopian government.
This simple device has brought about the kind of change in thinking that reformers hope will eventually take root in the developed world.
"Some of our farmers say, 'We used to think poop was dirty, but now it's our gold,' " says Simpson-Hebert.
"They won't let their children defecate in the open. They say, 'Go put your gold in the toilet.' "
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow is a contributing writer for Ideas. She can be reached at rebecca.tuhusdubrow@gmail.com.

1: Take your used batteries home with you. Disposing them on Bonaire means that they end up on landfill, seep into the ground and end up as a snack for the goats.
2: Bring Tupperware containers with you for take-away food. All of the snack-bars serve their food in Styrofoam boxes which are everywhere. Instead, ask them to use your own container.
3: When brushing your teeth, turn off the tap (faucet) between brushes. Why run the water continuously?
4: In the shower. Wet yourself and turn off the water while you lather up.
5: Don't leave electrical appliances on when not in your room. ESPECIALLY THE AIR-CON!.
6: When getting ice cream, get a cone rather than a plastic cup & spoon.
7: Don't buy styrofoam coolers. Pack your own collapsible cooler in your luggage.
8: Instead of taking a few one week visits a year, reduce your carbon footprint by taking one longer trip.
9: Divers, see if you can get together with others to share a vehicle. I always see lines of pick-ups along the coast with two people in each.
10: Drink draught beer rather than bottled where possible. Some companies (I think Polar) do not recycle.
11: Use as little plastic as possible and take as much of what you do use home in your luggage for recycling at home.
12: Bring a re-usable water container to the island and fill it daily with wonderful Bonaire tap water. Don't buy bottled water on Bonaire - it's a waste of money and resources to bottle it and transport it to Bonaire all for water quality that is likely not as good as Bonaire tap water.
13: Buy one of the good sturdy reusable grocery bags at Warehouse to use for groceries during your stay and take it home for use there.
14: Only use rechargeable batteries, we have changed all of our dive lights so we only use AA batteries in strobes and lights which keeps things simple.

"12: Bring a re-usable water container to the island and fill it daily with wonderful Bonaire tap water. Don't buy bottled water on Bonaire - it's a waste of money and resources to bottle it and transport it to Bonaire all for water quality that is likely not as good as Bonaire tap water."

What about all the posts on raw sewage being dumped into the ocean? Do you actually have enough faith in WEB to ensure water quality standards are maintained?

Reverse osmosis distillation is pretty insensitive to the amount of fecal matter in the ocean water, so yes.

By the nature of the reverse osmosis desalination the effluent of this treatment is highly concentrated salty water. This effluent is send to the ocean via a corrosion resistance pipe. The corrals like salty water but not high concentrated salty water like that. Furthermore, as fare I know the membrane of reverse osmosis needs to be cleaned from time to time. I am not sure which kind of chemical is used, but I guess this must be a very powerful substance and for sure not innocence to the nature. Where the used chemicals are “going” after use maybe the manager of WEB can clarify.
Anybody know in detail which chemicals are used for cleaning the membranes of reverse osmosis desalination plants?

Detlef

by WHO law the WEB water is tested twice daily in the WEB lab. ... WEB water consistently tests at WHO'S highest standards....

Detlef... years ago when my late husband was the operations manager for Aqua Design .. the reverse osmosis company.. cleaning was done by a process called "back-washing" which involved NO use of chemicals. for current information you may want to contact Aqua Design at E-Mail web@web.an

sorry but I forgot to mention that the highly concentrated salt water was not pumped into the ocean- all i can recall at this moment is that there was a special process in effect for this water as Aqua Design was well aware of the value of the Bonaire reefs and their protection. This is about all I can help you with .. I encourage you to contact Aqua Design - an international company producing fresh water by reverse osmosis world-wide.

I wonder if they can send the concentrated salt water to the salt flats? That's what they use to make their product. Less evaporation needed.

Dear All,

one more example where possible to go with integrated sanitation developments on the island:

Water supply and water disposal techniques such as the treatment of surface water, flushing toilets, canalisation and centralized sewage treatment plants which are practised and in many cases well established in industrialized countries are not applicable to all regions of the world for geographic, technical and financial reasons. Moreover, even in the industrialized countries there is need for further development at the present technical level to reduce the disadvantages of conventional systems. An existing major disadvantage is that huge amounts of resources have to be spent to eliminate nutrients and other substances contained in waste water. Also, the method of diluting and mixing applied at present has proven to be unsustainable. For these reasons, worldwide research efforts have been undertaken on new so-called ‚Alternative Sanitation Concepts’ (ecosan), as well as on ‚Decentralized Sanitation and Reuse’ (DeSaR), concepts which are supposed to eliminate the above mentioned problems and close water and nutrient cycles.

The KOMPLETT recycling system for grey and black waters is designed particularly for hotel facilities, small settlements, recreational and shopping centres as well as for skyscrapers. In these locations waste water is being produced from showers, hand washing sinks, kitchens, washing machines and toilets. By collecting the waters separately and having them undergo a multi-step redundant treatment, the reusability of the water according to high quality standards should be possible. The recycling plant with leading automatisation technology, remote operation monitoring, and user-friendly visualisation in combination with an innovative sanitation technology is being designed especially for the above-mentioned purposes. Water scarce areas and remote, sparsely populated regions without existing water supply and disposal infrastructure are particularly going to benefit from such systems, but also regions with high water supply and disposal costs.

see example: http://www.komplett-projekt.de/index.php?id=2244&L=en

two similar ecological sanitation concept examples more to reduce finally long-term running costs:

http://www.novaquatis.eawag.ch/arbeitspakete/index_EN

http://www.sansed.uni-bonn.de/PAGE1/Concept.htm

I just saw this on Habitats Web Site. What a great idea for the Hotel to do.

http://habitatbonaire.com/articles/News/Eco-Challenge.aspx

I also just read the article. I plan on forwarding it to the company that manages HOR.

For the moment. not worth the chasing for the thread on water conservation. Not a concern on bonaire. Yet. We have 804 swimming pools now. At least 11 more in construction.

As for plastic drinking bottles. Just walk down the aisles of any super market. Coke, pop, any soft drink, even wine, oils or whatever.

Last week I spent thousands of dollars renewing my battery bank here at my farm. The whole back end of my pick up is full of marine batteries. Nobody will take them off of my hands. However, it was suggested that I just dump them in the landfill, cover them with household trash, plant trimmings, stuff like that, nobody the wiser. Another friend with a sizeable fishing boat says load them aboard, and I'll dump them for you at sea.

What say, guys?

In my mind, waste water pollution in the sea is our biggest problem. It appears that the hotels have somehow involved themselves in a dilemma. Some of you people out there did a good job.

Now, the boil has come to a head and been lanced. It is time for an all out serious Rx. The healing is now started. The work begins.

My team will accept ANY intelligent possible solutions. You will reach the Accolade team at "Accolade" callingintheclan@yahoo.com. No idle chitchat or further complaining. Now is the time for serious solutions.

Captain Don

Dear Captain Don,

Doing a campaign to do “something”, like transporting the problem with trucks out of sight to the middle of the island and sinking it there… finally with a delay to the corrals, is not clear enough and not helpful and only costly. But maybe good for the souls as “something” been done.

The following is to have quick desired results and have a long-term solution the same time, it is not an emergency type of intervention (not a quick and dirty).

May you take the focus from the typical „end of the pipe“ to the starting point of pollution. This is the first step in the right direction. Do not get frighten by big-head talkers, who always know things much better as you ;-). Get your own information about better sanitation approaches:

- UNESCO-IHE’s free online course material
http://www.lms.ihe.nl/index.asp
Login (ID): ecosandemo; Password (PWD): 1234
- ECOSANRES discussion group at Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ecosanres/
- http://www.ecosanres.org/pdf_files/SanitationNOW2008.pdf
- Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) http://www.susana.org/

Second step: Stop increasing through flushing with water of an originally small volume problem of urine and faeces. In other words, do not add water to urine and faeces. Separate/collect urine and faeces and greywater (greywater comes from showers and wash machines not from kitchen and toilet),

Third Step: Treat urine and faeces separate in a simple way via dehydration. Example: see* . Much easier on Bonaire, as you have a dry-hot climate. Take the small volume of pre-treated and dry parts to a composting side. (You will need much smaller amounts of trucks to do so, in comparison to sewage loads.) Compost it in a professional manner together with kitchen and garden leftovers. In tropical climate the composting process is very fast. Use final compost for soil improvement in inland only not at beach properties.

Forth Step: Treat greywater simple via small constructed wetlands and reuse treated water for garden irrigation.

5. Step: Of course this needs money to change your existing inappropriate flushing systems. Demand it from the earmarked EU-funds. Demand EU-funds for a professional sanitation-planning. Take the island sanitation planning in your own hands by doing a REAL community planning. Have good planners, SuSanA and ECOSANRES can help you to do so in professional manners.



If you need further assistance do not hesitate to contact me.

All the Best

Detlef SCHWAGER

* Example of Dehydration of faeces and urine in one go:
A South Africa made "Tumble-dryer-toilet" for normal use by family with 8-10 people:
You may see Video from supplier of waterless toilet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPummZRR2Cg
and http://www.ecosan.co.za/

and in Trinidad and Tobago: http://www.uress.com/

At the landfill Sunday I noticed a huge pile of glass bottles, dumped in the household waste section.
It must have been a whole truck load, too much for a pick-up.
So much for keeping bottles separate.

How about trying to get the import of polystyrene food containers reduced by taxing them heavily. there must be alternatives! Unfortunately it looks as though most of these are used by locals having take-aways as their regular diet, so comments about tourists bringing their own tupperware probably won't help.

If I understand right Bonaire will be by 15.12.2008 part of NL and EU. Therefore, all the EU and NL environmental and water conservation laws will apply to Bonaire to.
E.g., the shop who sales batteries to you is 100% responsible to take your old batteries back and transfer them to professional recycling facilities.

If not proper applied by January 2009, change your local government ;-)

Detlef SCHWAGER

Detlef,

I am not sure if the status of the new "town" of Bonaire (including what laws are valid on Bon) is clear at this time.

Martin