Please stop messing your wonderful home

We have just returned from our vacation to Kaua’i. It is indeed a beautiful

place and we really enjoyed being there.

However, we were really saddened

by some of the things we saw on our visit. While driving around, we were very

disappointed to see abandoned vehicles at several locations, and some had

obviously been there for some time. These were on the way to Waimea Canyon and

at Fort Elizabeth, and also on the way to Wailua Falls. There was one vehicle

on the side of Kuhio Highway for the whole length of our visit.

We were

also sad to see litter accumulating on the beaches, pop cans and plastic

bottles, along with plastic bags, cigarette butts and other things which had

been strewn around and had no business being there.

Why is this? Kaua’i is

such a lovely place and tourism is the biggest industry. It won’t be a lovely

place for very long if things are not brought under control. It can’t be

difficult for the police or park wardens or whichever authorities are

responsible for this kind of thing to take some action:

1). Check the VIN

number on the vehicle and trace it to the owner for a fine and vehicle removal.

2). Charge a deposit on cars and bottles so that people will be more

inclined to recycle.

3). Recycling – we see that you have a few places on

the island as collection points. It would be an easy step for each hotel to

have a collection place for pop cans, plastic and glass bottles. They know that

vacationers will buy these products.

4). Educate the islanders on

recycling.

5). Get your youth involved in being proud of their island and

help to take care of it. This would be easy to do through the schools.

We

realize that not all vacationers will be environmentally conscious, but maybe

there can be an awareness campaign to help protect Kaua’i. We were told that

some of the youth don’t have enough to keep them busy and so they tend to party

(this was in response to questions asked about vandalism. I was dismayed to see

the Whaling Wall in Kapa’a had holes in it where someone had used it for target

practice).

Since your publication is presumably read by islanders and

visitors alike, you reach a large readership on the island. We hope that your

readers would take notice of a letter such as this or an article on this issue,

and we encourage you to include this in your paper.

Here in Edmonton, we

pay for deposits on cans, bottles and juice boxes. We also pay for garbage

removal and recycling in our utilities. Everyone accepts that it is necessary,

and we want our environment to be pleasant, too.

Please get the word out

to the people on your island, whether residents or visitors, that this is an

important issue and if action isn’t taken very soon, there won’t be a paradise

there any more and visitors won’t come. Take care of your wonderful home.

We find our holiday, although modest, to be very expensive. We’d love to

come back again to visit Kaua’i, but we may have second thoughts if the garbage

problem is not dealt with.

Frances and Roy Helland

Edmonton, Alberta,

Canada