With the success of our World Environment Day “day without plastic,”, the TCI Environmental Club hopes to gain some momentum with the youth with outreach activities at the schools.  Lynn Robinson started this great initiative a few weeks ago.  Today I will be talking to students at the Oseta Jolly school about the environment and what they can do to protect it.  How much do you know about the Turks and Caicos Islands environment?  Do you know how these islands were formed?  (follow the links to find out!) inaugural-post, halimeda-and-penicillus, halimeda  Do you know about our rare Tropical Dry Forest environment and why it is so special globally? environment.tc  Do you know some of the plants and flowers of the Turks and Caicos Islands?environment.tc/Plants  Do you know what endemic species are and what are the endemics of the T.C.I.? treasures.com/turkscaicos  How about reptiles, did you know we have many not found any other place on earth? reptilestci and Caribherp  Have you heard of Ramsar and what studies have been done here? jncc  I invite everyone to continue to learn about the environment and all the fascinating things that take place in nature.  Please take a little time this weekend to find out a little something new about your home environment.  Love where you live!

It has finally arrived after months in the making . . . . . A Day Without Plastic!  The tci-environmental-club, as part of our Campaign to Ban Single Use Plastic Bags in the TCI, has successfully held the first ever Turks and Caicos Islands World Environment Day event. The organisers Lynn Robinson, David Stone, Lindsay Mensen, Roland Wojewodzki, Lormeka Williams, Wesley Clerveaux, and myself, could not have accomplished a fraction of the goals without the assistance of so many businesses and generous members of the community.  We would like to thank grace bay resorts, the veranda, provo power company, wiv, grace bay realty, KB-Home-Center, Building Materials, and British West Indies Collegiate for the donation of over 1,000 reusable shopping bags for today’s event.

   We would also like to thank all of the retailers who agreed to refrain from using plastic bags, welcomed our volunteers at their businesses, and let us speak with their patrons for todays event.  And last but certainly not least, we would like to extend our gratitude to all of the individuals who donated their morning to our cause:
Gabrielle, Jessica, and Guillaume at Island Pride Supermarket, Eric Salamanca of the DECR and Malcolm Ross at the graceway iga, Sandra Shaw, Cleveland Harvey, and Pattie Ehlir Carlin at the Quality Supermarket downtown, Will and Laura Leoncilla of challengeyourworld.com, and DECR director Wesley Clerveaux at the Price Club supermarket, Kenol Joseph of the DECR and Joana Vaz Pinto at the Quality Supermarket on Leeward Hwy, Christa Reckhorn of the free press and Kristi Vestal of after 5 Concierge at the KB Home Center, Lyle Schmidek of grace-bay-realty and Teresa Brunner of tropicaldmc at business-solutions, Lynn Robinson and Subrena Pedican at graceway gourmet, and Stacie Steensland of TC Millwork and Lindsay Mensent at do it center provo. 

Our final thanks goes out to big blue unlimited who sponsored the purchase of 18″ x 24″ aluminum “Shop With Thought” signs that were hung at each of the above establishments by tcmillwork volunteer Stephane Gaudet this morning to remind patrons to use their reusable bags each and every day.  It was a real pleasure to have all of these great businesses and people working side by side today for a common goal.

Please take the time this weekend to do something for World Environment Day.  Watch the global W.E.D. map come alive with efforts all over the world here.  Be inspired.  Take action. Love where you live.