Three Day Summit to Focus on Plastic Free Living

A community-based campaign to eliminate single-use disposable plastic will take a new approach this Thursday with the start of a three day summit on plastic free living.

The free and open to the public Summit on St. John is part of a month-long awareness effort called Plastic Free July. From Thursday, July 27 to Saturday, July 29, a series of dialogue sessions, gatherings and activities examine the issue.

Summit venues include the St. John Westin, Cinnamon Bay Campground and the Guy Benjamin Community Center in Coral Bay.

Topics include current best practices to reduce unnecessary plastic in the Caribbean and globally; bio-plastics, compostables and other plastic alternative products; ways to reduce the use of plastics at events and while dining out.

Organizers also plan to hold a movie night at Susannaberg Ruins on Friday. A plastics free art exhibit will be presented at Bajo El Sol Gallery from 7:30 – 9pm on Thursday.

The featured speaker of the summit is a recycling infrastructure specialist from Hawaii. There will also be subject-matter experts attending and speaking at the various sessions hailing from California and the Bahamas.

The Summit focuses on ways that residents, visitors, merchants, hotels, resorts, villa, hospitality employees, property owners and local organizations can individually curb harmful single-use plastic in both their daily personal life and business life.

For the full Summit schedule, click here. To register, click here.

The Summit on St. John is produced and hosted by Plastic-Free Island: St. John , an all-volunteer collaboration project aimed at public awareness and targeting the elimination of immediate and long-term damage caused by disposable plastics. Locally, the Island Green Living Association and Coral Bay Community Council are among those involved in supporting the Summit and related July activities.

Plastic-Free Island: St. John is an Innovation Project launched on St. John in mid-2016 under the Plastic-Free Island concept founded by Dianna Cohen (Plastic Pollution Coalition ) and Pam Longobardi (Drifters Project).