Contaminación de las playas del cocal de puntarenas

Colegios Científicos Costarricenses
Sede del Pacifico

La contaminación de nuestras playas y los escasos esfuerzos del Gobierno por reducir el uso de materiales no biodegradables y de aumentar las campañas de recolección de desechos y reciclaje.

Jean Carlo Vargas Barrantes
Moisés Méndez González
Mauricio Álvarez González
María José Solano Sánchez

Abstract: "Costa Rica, a country inpeace and harmony with nature, with beautiful beaches and beautiful land, its humid and wet forests can provide the most impressive of their adventures.” This is the mirror with advertising campaigns covering a country that is currently contaminated from the sea, to their highest points, from border to border. Although not always the case, we Costa Ricans (and world population in general) havemaintained a "consumer policy" too high in terms of non-biodegradable products in question. You can see the effects of this in the Puntarenas beaches, where the effects of solid waste pollution are huge, to say the least. Many of these products, not being naturally degraded by living organisms that are responsible for it remain on the earth for tens and even hundreds of years (note that some plasticshave a half life of 200 years and even more), causing it to accumulate more and more waste on the beach. Upon reaching the beach we see how he was flooded with waste rather than sand.

Many of the objects found were simple branches and large sticks, carried by the tides, but on the other hand, we also found huge amounts of plastic and glass containers, cartons and cardboard packaging, amongothers. After completing the measurements for each subgroup (50 lineal meters, approximately), we get into the work of collecting solid waste product by brand (if not taking the mark or that could not be recognized as such, the object was discarded) and then classified into different types: plastic, glass, cans, cardboard, etc. Doing a little analysis of the collected waste (185 products in total),points to a strong presence of plastics (178 products, approx.), followed by glass containers (6 products, approx.) cartoons (5 products Approx.) carton packaging (3 products, approx.) and below them, tin cans (1 product, approx.). In addition to the above, split the plastic found in sub-categories (types of plastic, according to density and composition), these are: Polyethylene terephthalate, PET(163 products, approx.), Polyethylene, PE (7 products, approx.), High Density Polyethylene, HDPE (6 products, approx.) and polystyrene, PS (2 products, approx.). In accordance with all of the above, it concluded that advertising companies reflect a bad image of Costa Rica, perhaps in order to attract as many tourists as possible (who greatly increase pollution.) It was possible to collect as muchwaste as possible and approximate measurements on samples of debris found on the beach. Also concluded that we need to act immediately before the great "crimes" committed against our Mother Earth, not just a matter of going to a contaminated site to see how terrible the conditions under which we find ourselves today, if we look around us, we will realize it. We need to be aware of this, creatingmore garbage collection campaigns, encourage recycling projects in schools and colleges, giving lectures in communities, which encourage good human culture and the spirit of solidarity with and for the environment.

Keywords: Beach pollution, non-biodegradable products, garbage collection campaigns and recycling.

La contaminación mundial ha llegado a un nivel casi incontrolable y en CostaRica ya se han visto sus malos efectos. Esto causa que las fuentes hídricas del país estén afectadas. Un claro ejemplo son las playas (en este caso la de Puntarenas) en las que notoriamente se observa la contaminación y otros graves problemas.

Para poder reducir los problemas ambientales, es necesaria la cooperación de todas las personas y la organización de las municipalidades para lograr...