WILLEMSTAD – In a letter addressed to the government, parliament and other stakeholders, the Curaçao Clean Up Foundation calls for far-reaching measures against pollution. The letter can be signed as a petition for the Curaçao population on the website www.change.org. The foundation strives for at least 8,000 signatures, or five percent of the Curaçao population.
According to the foundation, the reason for the petition is the enormous amount of pollution on the street, both litter and dumped waste. The waste is a threat to nature and public health, and in times of corona a more topical subject than ever. In addition, the pollution problem threatens to become so great that cleaning up is almost impossible.
The petition comes a month before the eighth edition of World Clean Up Day Curaçao on Saturday, September 19, in its first editions known as Curaçao Clean Up. During the first seven editions, 17,800 volunteers cleared more than 2.5 million kilos of waste. Nevertheless, the foundation sees that the attention for a clean environment has declined enormously in the past year, partly due to the corona crisis.
“With our cleaning campaigns and the population, we have done our best in recent years to raise awareness and make the island cleaner. We cannot do more. Government and Parliament have the moral obligation to provide the right frameworks to make it possible to reduce pollution and to combat this ever-increasing disaster,” said Maarten Schakel, chairman of the Curaçao Clean Up Foundation.
The petition calls for various spearheads, such as drastically reducing landfill costs at Selikor, stricter enforcement, a ban on single-use plastic from 1 January 2021 and a long-term information and education campaign. With a substantial number of signatures, the foundation intends to present the petition to both the government and the Parliament.
You can sign the petition at http://chng.it/tHWWvgtNCj. This link can also be found on our Facebook pages: Curaçao Clean Up and World Clean Up Day Curaçao.
The organization calls on all volunteers during World Clean Up Day Curaçao to maintain social distance and pay extra attention to hygiene. Because the action takes place in the open air and the participants are spread over a large area, doctor Izzy Gerstenbluth has given the green light to the action based on the above guidelines, with an evaluation moment one week before World Clean Up Day Curaçao.
You can register as a group or individual volunteer for World Clean Up Day Curaçao 2020 from Monday 24 August on www.worldcleanupdaycuracao.org.
