UTILA — With its picture perfect turquoise waters, the Caribbean island of Utila, part of an offshore archipelago called the Bay Islands, is a tropical paradise. But its beautiful beaches can be strewn with trash during the fall rainy season, when litter and other refuse is carried by the tides.
Images taken by photographer Caroline Power of enormous masses of floating plastic garbage off the nearby island of Roatan generated international headlines in 2017. Sea turtles have problems nesting. Residents see dolphins playing with bags that look like jellyfish. And plastics threaten the health of the nearby Mesoamerican Reef, the world's second largest coral reef system and one of the most biodiverse coral areas on the planet.
Utila Mayor Troy Bodden isn't surprised. "Thirteen municipalities and four hospitals throw all the garbage in the Motagua River that merges with the Atlantic Ocean," he says, referring to the 482-kilometer-long Guatemala river that forms the border between the two nations in its final stretch before entering into the sea.
More than 5 tons of plastic were collected for recycling, both from beach cleanups and from homes, hotels and restaurants.
There are no easy solutions for a tiny island like Utila, a top diving tourism destination. That's why it is now trying to get creative — by not only clearing the waste, but putting some of it to good use. At the end of 2017, the town finished building its first road made partly of plastic. Six months later it is now concluding a second.
A laborer takes ground recycled plastic to prepare concrete. Calle Lozano is the second street of Utila made with plastic — Photo: Monica Pelliccia/News Deeply
A global trend
A sea lover and ship captain who says he descends from a famed pirate, Bodden was inspired when visiting tourists showed him a video of roads paved with plastic in Canada. Indeed, plastic is increasingly being used as a road construction material around the world. The Indian state of Maharashtra, for example, has already laid 1,000 kilometers of road using 5,000 metric tons of plastic, and plans to increase those numbers by 10 times in coming years.
Utila, at only 11 kilometers long, can't put down that much road. But it can save money by reusing every small amount of plastic it can.
"Also, we would like to build benches. And why not start to export concrete blocks made of plastic?"
Millions of plastic bottles — equaling almost the weight of one whale shark, the biggest fish in the ocean and one of the inhabitants of Utila's waters — arrived on the island by boat last year, according to Bodden. Rosalia Argueta, environment coordinator of the municipality of Utila, says more than 5 tons of plastic were collected for recycling, both from beach cleanups and from homes, hotels and restaurants.
Still, sustainably recycling all of this plastic requires shipping to a mainland recycling plant, located more than three hours by car from the closest port.
"Roads paved with recycled plastic could be a sustainable solution that permits us to save the cost to separate, clean, compact and send the bales to the mainland," says Bodden. He began by acquiring funding from the Free Tourist Zone of Bay Islands, a government institution, to spend $5,000 to acquire a machine to grind up the plastic.
Laboratory tested
Intersecting the corner of Main Street, lined with tourist bars and dive centers, Calle Holland is now paved with a mix of cement, sand, gravel and 28% ground and melted recycled plastic. The formula was first tested at a laboratory in Honduras to check its durability under weight and weather. The project used 80,000 plastic bottles to pave the 91-meter-long strip.
A second road, Acceso a Calle Lozano, is now also being paved. Every Tuesday and Thursday, plastic is collected from the beaches and the recycling center. It's ground into pellets and delivered in huge black bags to the road construction site.
The construction of Calle Lorenzo, made with 28% recycled plastic — Photo: Monica Pelliccia/News Deeply
Eymi Yolanda Reyes Galeas, 28, is the engineer supervising construction. "Today, we are using 600 pounds of plastic (272 kilograms) to make the concrete," she says. "We reduce the quantity of plastic wastes in the island, and we use it for a common good." As she urges workers to wet the road, a few tourists walking by start to video the work after they learn about the project.
Bodden has plans to scale up the work. Building more road infrastructure, he says, is a priority for the largely undeveloped island. "Our next step will be to pave all the new streets with this formula," he says. "Also, we would like to build benches. And why not start to export concrete blocks made of plastic?"
He leaves his office on an electric tuk-tuk to head to his house, located just at the corner of Calle Holland. It's a name that reminds him that there are many parts of the world, including the Netherlands, where plastic is having a second life in urban construction. "My aim is to make a dent in the plastic pollution of our beautiful archipelago," he says.
