Fabricio Valverde was an Ecuadorian who loved nature. An oceanographer with a master’s degree in resource management and a naturalist guide, he was working as the technical chief of the Galapagos National Park in 1998 when, returning from training in France, he was killed when the plane carrying him crashed in Bogota. I learned about him through the painful story of his widow Angie, who received the fatal news in the sixth month of her pregnancy.

Today, on the island of Santa Cruz, where the park that he loved so much is located, Fabricio Valverde is called a collection center for the waste produced by settlers and tourists. Recyclable waste, such as plastic, paper and glass, is separated there, but large quantities of foam containers, mattresses, diapers and other non-recyclable disposables arrive to be packed, weighed and transported in containers to the mainland in Guayaquil , to the Geocycle company that buys them to give them a second use, a second chance, turning them into energy for the production of cement, after a precise process that ends up in Holcim’s kilns.

The transformation of the garbage of the Galapagos that makes me think about how powerful this place still is, the place where the theory of evolution of the English scholar Charles Darwin was conceived. Applause.

The work done at the collection site, which I saw firsthand on the outskirts of Puerto Ayora, is commendable. Glass bottles, which are strictly controlled on the archipelago, go to mills where they are prepared for joining building materials, and recyclable plastics, bottles, glasses and the like are then also sent to companies that will remelt them. Organic waste, food, is selected in order to bury part of it or, after patient processing, turn it into compost, fertilizer, which is used in the same agriculture on the islands. All this in a meticulous way that required the regulations of the previous municipal administration, which prescribe the mandatory use of covers by color, green for organic, blue for recyclable and black for those that are not. Covers that the inhabitants of the Galapagos have to buy out of their own pockets, in order to fulfill the individual ecological task that, above all, the new generations already recognize as theirs.

Santa Cruz, the largest place for the protection of species and the eternal rest of icons such as Lonesome George, who remains embalmed in the National Park, is thus a population with 60% success in recycling, when arriving in mainland Ecuador only 5%. And as such an example for the world

how to take public policies, even if unpopular, in pursuit of conservation and combine them with good business practices within the framework of sustainability.

If Fabricio Valverde, the oceanographer who died young while training to protect the Galapagos, could see what is currently being done in his name, he might smile. The ability to throw out trash that is impossible to reuse is no doubt a feat he must have dreamed of. A worthy tribute to his memory. (OR)