We pay for Galapagos Islands waste services

8:49am Wednesday 25th April 2007

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A TAUNTON woman is incensed after learning British taxpayers money is being spent on paying for waste disposal services on the other side of the world.

Pat Gwynn and her husband Alan were enjoying dinner at a restaurant on the island of Santa Cruz, in the Galapagos Islands, when a dustcart went past bearing a EU flag with the words financed by the European Union on it.

They were furious to see that money from Europe was being spent on providing refuse facilities for a country 1,000 miles off the coast of Ecuador, and when they returned home decided to try and find out why.

Mrs Gwynn said: "I wrote to our MEP Graham Watson to try and find out why we were paying for this service, but didn't really get an answer, I have just been passed from pillar to post.

"I have now been told that the EU funds part of the waste services on the Galapagos Islands because most of the waste is being made by increasing numbers of visitors but that's ridiculous.

"A lot of visitors don't stay on the islands, but go on cruises instead so they do not create a lot of waste.

"Also before anyone is allowed to leave the airport they have to pay a $100 fee (around £50) for entering the national parks.

"Last year 200,000 people visited the islands, which works out at $20million, surely some of that could cover the cost of their waste service."

Mrs Gwynn was also annoyed that the dustcarts made collections every night, whereas in Taunton and Wellington landfill rubbish is only collected every two weeks.

But Mr Watson said the EU is simply trying to balance out some of the damage European visitors were causing.

Therefore it had agreed to spend some of its development funding helping get rid of the their waste.

He said: "Some 95% of the development funding from the EU goes to low income countries but some does go to middle income countries such as this.

"The islands did not have the facilities to getting rid of the amount of rubbish that was being produced so the EU has part funded a scheme to help."