Chile: Pitching In

Roughly 80 000 visitors come to Easter Island every year and as I told you in my previous post, it's a very remote island. You can only fly to it from two places: Santiago de Chile or Tahiti, an island in the French Polynesia. It's about a five hour flight from either place. The island itself is very tiny: it's about 163 square kilometres (the city of Calgary is over 700). So I ask you to think... When so many people visit such a small place, where do they put all of their garbage? There isn't enough space for a big landfill, it's unhealthy to burn it, and you shouldn't throw it out in the ocean, so, where does it go? Well, they have to send it back to mainland Chile, all the way across the ocean, which is very expensive.



So, I felt it was my responsibility to create even less garbage than I normally do, and to take as much of it out myself when I left. I tried to eat local foods and fresh things that didn't come in wrappers. I avoided buying bottles of water and instead used tablets to make sure the tap water was safe. And I was lucky enough to get to participate in one more thing to help the island's environment: I joined a group of high school students who were hiking out to an empty part of the island to plant trees.


The wind here on Easter Island is really, really strong, and there aren't very many trees. That means that erosion is a big problem here (when the land wears away and crumbles over time). One area in the island, in particular, is quite barren (empty). About 70 of us together hiked for a couple of hours to this section that is being rehabilitated.

It took us about an hour to plant 1400 saplings of Aito. This type of tree grows well in areas where the soil is really hard, rocky, and missing good nutrients. Once these trees start growing, they'll help to break down the hard soil and make it easier for other things to grow. Then Mako'i, Dodonea and Albizia trees will be planted as well. The naturalist in charge told us that about 90% of the trees we plant should survive, so we felt really good about what we'd done to help the island's environment!