A marvelous article about the Future Centre’s leadership in recycling appears in the current edition of the McGill Reporter – the newspaper for McGill University in Montreal Canada.
Writer and undergraduate student Sibeal McCourt spent some time in Barbados last fall during a Field Study Semester and she was some impressed with Vicky Merrick and Nicole Garofano.

Sibeal McCourt
“…I also did an internship with the Future Centre, a local, not-for-profit organization promoting sustainable/environmental initiatives in Barbados. They were focusing on recycling while I worked with them.
Vicky Merrick and Nicole Garofano, who run the Future Centre, are so energetic and driven that you can’t help but be swept up in their mission to get Barbadians (locally referred to as Bajans) to recycle. Under the tutelage of Vicky and Nicole, my eyes were opened to the serious waste management issues present in Barbados. Their main landfill, the Mangrove Pond Landfill, is so overflowing that Bajans refer to it as “Mount Stinkaroo.”
Recycling in the Shadows of Mount Stinkeroo
The article goes on to talk about Miss (?) McCourt’s surprise that the Barbados government is not showing leadership in recycling and that we lack a government recycling programme…
“Coming from Canada, where recycling is government-run with scheduled pickups every week, I took waste management for granted. I thought that Vicky and Nicole were simply trying to expand on an already present recycling program, or educate people on how to recycle more efficiently. As it turns out, there is NO state recycling program in Barbados.”
Barbados: A country with no Environmental Laws
Although Miss McCourt’s article shows a very positive image of the folks who do such good work at The Future Centre and of Barbados and Bajans generally, left unsaid is the big truth about Barbados: Our country has no environmental legislation.
Oh, we’ve been promised environmental laws by every government since we gained independence back in 1966, but so far promises is all we have. I wonder if Miss McCourt is aware of the Shell Oil pipeline spill in Barbados where our impotent government has done nothing while Shell ruined the land and water and then pulled out leaving a big mess?
Shell could only do that because we have no environmental laws.
So thanks to Sibeal McCourt for her positive article and well-deserved congratulations to Vicky Merrick, Nicole Garofano and all those heros at The Future Centre. We hope that Sibeal will return to Barbados in 2010.
We also hope that the long promised Environmental Legislation is delivered soon by the David Thompson government and that it doesn’t have so many holes in it that a Shell tanker could motor through.
Well, Environment Minister Lowe… where is the legislation?
Further Reading
McGill Reporter: Recycling in the Shadows of Mount Stinkeroo