Caribbean yacht charter brokers act to cut plastic water bottles

Plastic bottles effort in the Caribbean SW

Pollution on the beach © SW

It will again award its Save the Blue Award to any yacht that fills out a survey at www.cyba.com/goinggreen and that can answer ‘yes’ to the first two criteria plus check off eight additional criteria, all of which indicate an effort to preserve the environment.

Here are the questions which yacht captains are required to answer:

Do you reduce plastic water bottle waste by producing your own drinking water? (We understand that some clients still want bottled water - we just want to know that you offer your own water as an option).

If you do not have a watermaker, do you reduce plastic water bottle waste by purchasing water in large containers?

Have you made sure your 'green specifications' are posted online?

Pollution in the ocean © SW

Yachts that qualify receive a Going Green ribbon to display at charter shows in St. Thomas and Antigua this winter. Yachts scoring the highest on the survey will be awarded CYBA’s Most Eco-Friendly Yacht award, one for power and one for sail in each show.

The effort is intended to make an impact on the amount of waste that yachts have on the smaller islands of the Bahamas and Caribbean, where recycling is non-existent.

'We hope that with broadened awareness, more yachts will rely on their own reverse osmosis water makers for drinking water, reducing the number of plastic bottles to be disposed into the landfills,' CYBA reported in a statement.

If you are NOT in the Caribbean, what's happening in your part of the world to stop what you see below, sometimes on completely uninhabited islands?

Plastic bottles - are you contributing to this? © SW