Starter Kit. Idea 259 of 500. Cluster 13
Coastal clean-up businesses paid by the hotels, with the plastic sold on for recycling
The mechanism, from the book
An ocean eight times the size of the land, and a fishing fleet that sells its catch on the beach. The Maldives built a tourism industry on water Sri Lanka has more of.
The first step
Walk the stretch of beach in front of three coastal hotels at dawn, photograph the plastic, and weigh what two people clear in an hour. Take the photographs and the weight to each general manager and offer a daily clean at a monthly fee, with a report guests can see. At the same time ask a scrap collector what they pay per kilo for each kind of plastic. A signed month from one hotel is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A beachfront hotel general manager whose guests complain about rubbish on the sand, and who would rather pay a monthly fee than lose bookings.
- What leaves today
- Plastic on the beach costs the hotels guests and is thrown away, when sorted and baled it is a raw material with a price.
Ask first
- Central Environmental Authority. Ask whether collecting and selling beach plastic needs a waste licence.
- the local council (Municipal Council, Urban Council or Pradeshiya Sabha). Ask whether a beach clean-up crew needs permission to work the shore.
Check before you spend
Whether you need a licence to collect, store and sell waste, and whether a recycler will buy the plastic you collect.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a hotel pay each month for a clean beach?
- How much plastic do two people clear in an hour?
- What does a recycler pay per kilo of sorted plastic?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.