Foreign garbage
Haitian, Venezuelan solid waste washing up on Jamaica’s shores
GARBAGE FROM our nearest neighbour, Haiti, and from far south as Venezuela is now reaching Jamaica’s shores, further contaminating the polluted harbour and adding fuel to a fire local officials have been battling for years.
“I think in Portland Bight we recognise it as a big issue. Every year we participate in coastal clean-up, and my feeling is that we need to this more often, because two week later, based on what is coming from Kingston Harbour and Haiti, it’s right there again,” Ingrid Parchment, executive director of the Caribbean Coastal Area Management (CCAM) Foundation, told a Gleaner Editors’ Forum last Thursday.
OVERSEAS PLASTIC WASTE
Parchment noted that plastic waste is the major problem for the island’s coast and beaches, and some of this is from overseas.
Science officer at C-CAM, Donovan Brandon Hay, said when the coastal clean-up is done the garbage is not only collected and disposed of, but is classified before disposal.
It’s during the classification process that the identification and determination is made.
“We also get waste from the coast of Venezuela,” Dr Karl Aiken, C-CAM director and fisheries specialist, told the forum.
“Our problems are not only locally sourced. It’s international. Just like how the sargassum from Brazil reaches here, so does international garbage from our neighbours,” added Thera Edwards, who chairs C-CAM’s board.
According to Parchment, disposing of the collected garbage is sometimes an issue for entities based in the mid-island parish of Clarendon.
“One of the challenges we have in Clarendon is our distance from the recycling points. So we have had collections over the years, and we waited for them to come for the plastic, they didn’t come. So persons get disheartened and ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ And this has happened in other areas so I think it is a major challenge,” said Parchment.
She welcomed the expansion in recycling opportunities in Jamaica, but argued that even more is needed because of the large amount of waste collected during beach clean-up drives.