Lessons Learned From The Tropics

My family and I moved to a small island nation in the Caribbean about seven years ago. We did this partly to escape the “rat race” and to simplify our lives. In doing so, we had a collective revelation; not about how complicated our lives had been, but how wasteful.

Living in a country where the taxes are use-based changes your perspective on what is necessary and what items are not so necessary. The island government’s income is derived from import tariffs in the form of stamp taxes and customs duties. Higher duties are placed on “convenience” or “luxury” items. While mainstays, such as flour, rice, beans had no duty placed on them; duties as high as 85 percent of the items value were placed on luxury items.

These luxuries included things such as paper napkins, Styrofoam, paper towels, bottled water, soda pop, disposable diapers and nearly all snack foods. Ironically (or perhaps planned, we still haven’t figured that one out), most of the items that became impractical to buy on a regular basis, were both terrible for the planet and often bad for our health as well.

We replaced paper napkins with cloth; invested in longwearing, lightweight, reusable plastic plates to carry to the beach for cookouts; thermoses replaced bottled water; and we learned to live without most snack foods. We learned to make healthy alternative snacks at home; sweet potato chips replaced Doritos, for instance.

How different would our lives be here in our own country if companies who over-packaged their goods, or utilized materials such as Styrofoam were taxed at an accelerated rate? Would your family live a healthier life if it became too expensive to purchase high-fat snacks? What if organic vegetables and fruit were a less expensive alternative to highly processed, convenience foods? What choices would you make and how would your life change?