Proposal: Fines and Community Service For Littering Puerto Rico

Lets get radical about littering

Hello wild ones, Welcome to my website, I have been living in Puerto Rico for 16 years and have spent the last 13 years on a mission spreading awareness about all this inundation of trash all over this beautiful island. I believe there needs to be stricter laws and punishment for littering. In this post I will write on what the government of Puerto Rico and everywhere else for that matter should do to those who trash the island and our world.

What I do for the beaches

Trash everywhere

So many beautiful rivers and beaches in Puerto Rico and most of the well known ones get filled with trash on a daily basis.

If you drive down these beautiful roads you would also find trash everywhere. Beer cans everywhere as people here drink and drive without impunity and to me it always seems like many people care more about drinking eating and having a good time more than they do their own island.

Now Puerto Rico is not as trashed as many other countries as trash is a human problem, But it still is filled with so much trash and neglect and sure we could blame the government but I think the people need to start caring for their own island.

beach guardian holding a sign that reads you dont respect the earth because you dont respect yourselves at a beach — You dont respect the earth because you don't respect your selves

Here is my proposal

I think there needs to be a stricter law out here since many get away with many things. They need to learn how to respect their own home. I truly believe that if anyone is caught littering they should be hit with a large fine, even if it is just one plastic cup. A fine of 2,000 would suffice for first offense and going up after that.

Also anyone caught littering should also do 8 hours of community service of cleaning up the garbage on the roads, beaches and rivers. They would also plant fruit trees and flowers or they could refuse and choose 1 week of prison for their first offense.

Second offense. If the first time they don't learn anything, for their second offense there punishment for litter would be a bigger fine and serve 3 to 7 days of that same community service. This time wearing a giant garbage bag around their neck to demonstrate the garbage that they are. Ok, Ok I got a bit radical there. Can you blame me?

But laws and punishment are only part of the answer. If we want lasting change, we have to go deeper. We have to start with the children.

There needs to be environmental education from the earliest age , not as a one-week unit tucked into a school year, but as a living thread woven through every grade, every classroom, every year. We need to cultivate a fundamentally different mindset than the one that treats the environment as an afterthought. We need a generation that grows up understanding that the rivers, the beaches, the forests, the roads, these are not backdrops to life. They are life. They are everything. They are sacred, But also not to rely on schools because education starts at home.

Imagine what Puerto Rico could look like. Imagine driving up these beautiful roads and that they are lined not with cans and plastic but with flowering trees.. Imagine beaches being pristine without diapers and trash in along the bushes , because boriken is a true paradise and that is how it should remain, not like a landfill.

That is what I have been fighting for. That is what thirteen years on this mission has always been about. We should strive to beautify this paradise and our world wherever we may be.

This is my proposal. It is time to crack down on littering. Time to send a clear message that we will not accept this any longer, not on this island, not anywhere on this earth we all share.