The ‘accidental environmentalists’ making Cayman a better place

By Christopher Tobutt

My daughter Naomi was the reason I found myself standing on an East End beach on Saturday evening, pulling on a pair of work gloves as the sun began its slow descent towards the horizon.

She had heard about a Plastic Free Cayman beach clean-up taking place near East End Primary School and suggested we go along.

By the time we arrived, shortly after 5pm, a handful of volunteers were already at work.

Some were combing through piles of seaweed. Others carried bright green collection bags that were slowly beginning to fill with plastic bottles, food wrappers, fragments of containers and countless other pieces of debris that had washed ashore, or maybe, simply been left there.

Within minutes, it felt like we were part of the team – among new friends.

Among the volunteers were Kayla Williams and her 15-year-old daughter, Sajni, who had already filled two big bags with beach debri. 

“The reason why we’re here is that we try to volunteer whenever we can in the community,” said Kayla. “We love our beaches, and I don’t think it’s right that people should come here and leave their rubbish behind. It’s good that there are groups like Plastic Free Cayman that help take care of the environment and remind people that these places belong to all of us.”

She believes more public rubbish bins would help in some beach areas.

For Sajni, the motivation was partly school community-service hours, but there was also something much simpler at work.

“I just like being outside,” she said, smiling. “I enjoy the beach, I enjoy nature, and it feels good when you’ve finished and you can actually see that you’ve helped.”

In some parts of the beach, plastic rubbish was everywhere.

It was impossible not to think about how many years some of those pieces might have spent in the ocean before eventually washing up on this quiet stretch of Cayman coastline.

That lesson, it turns out, is exactly why Claire Hughes, founder of Plastic Free Cayman, started organising the clean-ups.

“I’m really an accidental environmentalist,” she laughed. “I have no environmental background at all. I just saw a need.”

She explained that after taking part in larger annual clean-ups years ago such as the Chamber of Commerce clean-up, she realised Cayman’s beaches needed more frequent attention.

“You can tell people about plastic pollution all day long, but until they actually come out and experience it for themselves, they don’t realise how serious it is,” she said. “Plastic Free Cayman has been organising monthly clean-ups since September 2017, driven entirely by volunteers and supported by a network of community partners.

One of those long-time volunteers is Em Dacou, who has been involved for around five years.

“I stayed because it’s an amazing cause,” she said. “Reducing single-use plastics is something that’s very close to my heart, and these community events help keep that conversation alive.”

“The people here have genuinely become my friends,” she said. “We meet every month, we work hard together, and there’s a real sense of camaraderie. Many hands make light work. This is a village of people who show up with heartfelt dedication and sincerity.”

As the evening wore on, bags slowly filled.

Pile by pile, the beach became cleaner.

And then almost without anybody noticing, the sky began to steal the show.

Gold softened into orange. Orange deepened into pink. The sea reflected the colours like liquid glass.

Volunteers paused occasionally to admire the sunset before returning to the task at hand.

By the end of the evening, what remained with me was not the amount of rubbish collected, though it was considerable. It was the simple pleasure of strangers working side by side for something bigger than themselves.

Naomi and I arrived not knowing anyone.

We left carrying a bag of collected plastic, a deeper appreciation for the coastline we sometimes take for granted, and the feeling that we had spent an hour in the company of people quietly making Cayman a better place.

And as the sun set, strangers became friends on an East End beach.