Seven truckloads of garbage were collected by the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) during the organisation’s beach clean-up on International Coastal Clean-up (ICC) Day 2018 on September 15.

JET said that the garbage was taken at the end of the 2018 International Coastal Cleanup Day flagship event from the Palisadoes Go Kart-Track in Kingston.

JET stated that volunteers collected over 1,000 bags of garbage weighing an estimated 15,488 pounds from the Kingston Harbour coastline.

The number one item collected was plastic bottles, with a reported two truckloads of the items weighing an estimated 1,900 pounds removed for recycling by Recycling Partners of Jamaica (RPJ).

“Over 36,500 plastic bottles were collected by volunteers at the Go Kart Track on ICC Day this year,” said JET’s Programme Director Tamoy Singh Clarke.

“This is the largest number of plastic bottles JET has ever recorded at a single clean-up site in Jamaica since we began coordinating ICC nationally in 2008,” Singh Clarke stated.

Rounding out the top 10 items collected by JET volunteers were many other common plastic and foam products, including plastic bags and Styrofoam food and beverage containers.

The list of items collected detailed, 36,569 beverage plastic bottles; followed by 10,798 bottle caps; 9,069 plastic bags; 8,616 foam pieces; 7,298 plastic pieces; 4,604 grocery bags; 3,913 foam cups and plates; 3,152 take-out foam containers; 3,026 food wrappers; and 2,783 plastic cups and plates.

“This is the first time JET hosted a clean-up on the Kingston Harbour side of the Palisadoes Strip, and it was really an eye-opening experience for many of our volunteers who confronted Jamaica’s garbage crisis head-on,” said Clarke.

“Most of the garbage removed from the Go Kart Track originates in the streets, drains and gullies of Kingston, where it is carelessly discarded or illegally dumped. All it takes is one heavy afternoon downpour to wash Kingston’s garbage into the Kingston Harbour, where it floats across to the Palisadoes coastline.” she continued.

Some of the other items collected at JET’s 2018 clean-up included two refrigerators, five televisions, four traffic cones, 871 shoes, 56 toothbrushes, several car parts and small appliances, a wheelbarrow, and a store mannequin.

JET has also confirmed that over 150 other beach cleanups also took place across Jamaica on ICC Day this year — from Morant Point Lighthouse in St Thomas to Negril West End in Westmoreland. Between July and August JET successfully recruited 99 local groups to stage 2018 ICC events in Jamaica on September 15.

ICC Jamaica continued to be supported by the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF) in 2018; TEF were also joined by RPJ, Jamaica Energy Partners, and several other corporate sponsors to support JET’s staging of ICC Jamaica this year.

Chief executive officer of JET Suzanne Stanley informed that data from the other clean-ups will be compiled to produce JET’s national ICC report released in January each year.

“International Coastal Clean-up Day not only raises awareness among Jamaicans about how much of our garbage ends up in the sea; it also gives us data to illustrate the magnitude of Jamaica’s plastic pollution problem”, Stanley said.

A news release outlining data from JET’s 2018 beach cleanup comes less than a month after an announcement from the Jamaica Government that a ban is to be imposed on single-use plastic straws, plastic shopping bags, and Styrofoam food and beverage containers starting January 2019.

“The ban is a positive step towards Jamaica’s waste stream becoming more biodegradable in composition. But as our 2018 clean-up data highlights there is still an urgent need for a strategy to tackle the waste generated by plastic bottles in Jamaica. We look forward to the Government’s announcement on the plastic bottle deposit refund scheme which has been promised for later this month,” Stanley continued.