Garbage collection raising a stink
WE NEED some urgent attention on the i ssue of garbage collection. For the last couple of months, the service seems to have fallen off terribly in some areas. For example, it is now not uncommon to see the garbage piling up at my yard, at my neighbours’ yards, and right across my community. It is unsightly and a disgrace (especially after stray dogs ravage through bags of garbage).
Waste collection and disposal continue to be a major challenge in this country, and we cannot continue like this. The authorities need to get it together and be better. Do we not realise that beyond the unsightliness of garbage parading at people’s gates, it is a public health and environmental concern?
According to a 2016 publication on Solid Waste Management in the Caribbean by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), ‘An adequate Solid Waste Management (SWM) is essential to protect the environment and the public health’. They argue ‘Inadequate SWM can have negative impacts on public health and natural resources (air, land and water pollution), including impacts on marine environment.’ Among the impact of poor collection and disposal of waste, they report, is that it ‘can attract flies, mosquitoes and rats, which in turn may encourage the spread of diarrhoeal diseases, as well as diseases like dengue fever, yellow fever and bubonic plague’.
Every so often, waste collection and disposal occupy the nation’s attention because household waste isn’t collected frequently, there is fire or something. The collection service usually gets good after people complain and the media ventilate it until, for some unknown reason (or the same story), it gets bad again. It’s almost as if being consistent with, at the very least, an acceptable rate of waste collection is an insurmountable hurdle.
POLL
About a week ago, I ran an unscientific poll on Twitter to ascertain how people feel about the issue. I asked three questions – (1) How often is your garbage collected by National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA)? (2) Rate the garbage collection services in your community; and (3) Has garbage collection services in your community got bad over the last couple of months?
Fifty-three per cent of 608 persons said their garbage is collected weekly while 28.8 per cent said fortnightly and 18.3 per cent monthly. I was rather appalled that so many people were fortunate to have their garbage collected on a weekly basis. Several others too, especially when some revealed their general location. Some people joked that ‘garbage trucks reach it reach’ or that it comes ‘every three months or when dem remember’.
In addition to frequency of collection, 43.2 per cent of 359 people said garbage collection has got worse. At one point, my garbage was being collected weekly and, on occasion, twice. The schedule was predictable, and I didn’t have to worry about stray animals ‘sorting’ my waste for me to clean it up every morning.
Truth be told, garbage collection has got so bad in my community that I am barely able to tell how often mine is collected now. The other day it was about three weeks. Before that it might have been two weeks and, before that, around three weeks. I was cooking breakfast the other day when the truck finally came. I quickly turned down the stove as my friend exclaimed that the truck is finally here. There was such a mad rush to grab the bags that were on top of the overfull drums. The two drums at the front of the yard were full, there was garbage beside them and a bit at the back of the yard. The place was unsightly and unsanitary.
Overall, 39.5 per cent of 397 people said the garbage collection in their community is good while 38.8 per cent said it is average and 21.7 per cent indicated it is bad.
The challenges are evidently islandwide. Some persons say their garbage is either hardly or never collected and so they resort to recycling or burning. My mother who lives in Clarendon often tells me that she calls someone she knows who works at the company to find out when the truck is coming. A colleague in the Corporate Area shared, “I have had to resort to taking my trash in search of a garbage truck in the mornings. Lucky most times to see one on my route to work. But it’s gonna cost you a ‘change’.”
LOGISTICS ISSUE
Over in St Ann, one Twitter user shared that garbage collection ‘used to be once a week [but] about three months ago that changed and it has been once monthly since’. According to the individual, the NSWMA office in Ocho Rios said ‘they [are] having logistics issues, regarding truck availability’.
According to the NSWMA, it ‘operates according to established collection schedules. In most instances, solid waste in the Corporate Area (Kingston & St. Andrew) is collected once weekly’. But as someone said, “A critical issue is how unpredictable collection is. We don’t know when they’re coming. People put out their garbage hoping, and dogs have their way. Place nasty. If we knew, people could confidently put out per the schedule and not have to leave it out overnight for marauding dogs. ”Interestingly, in preparing this article, I found a schedule on NSWMA’s website but based on what currently obtains, that can’t be what they’re using.
I’m curious to know what is happening and what is the way forward to improve collection of waste across the country. We must pay closer attention to garbage collection. We need more trucks to add to the fleet and we need timely and frequent collection of our garbage. To ignore this grave issue is a public health and environmental concern.