MONTEGO BAY, St James — Each year the shoreline near Catherine Hall Entertainment Complex, the venue that hosts Reggae Sumfest in Montego Bay, is cleaned, but the garbage keeps coming back.

Among the items removed by more than 500 volunteers sweating in the early morning sun last Saturday morning were old tyres, cups, plates, and bottles. A total of 624 kilogrammes of plastic were collected in addition to an undetermined amount of bulky waste.

Chairman of the St James Municipal Corporation’s Public Health and Environmental Protection Committee, Councillor Anthony Murray (Jamaica Labour Party, Rose Hall Division) , was among those who participated.

“I’m somewhat disappointed, based of the volume of garbage, plastic — as a matter of fact, all types of debris — that we are cleaning up this morning,” Murray told the Jamaica Observer.

“We need to pay more attention to protecting our environment because this volume of garbage was not just generated yesterday, it has accumulated over time,” he added.

Chair of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association Montego Bay Chapter Nadine Spence highlighted the impact that improper waste disposal can have on tourism.

“When you take photos one of the most beautiful things to look at is the ocean and the coastline. However, when you are close up you see that this beauty is polluted by us, it’s very disheartening,” Spence said.

This is not her first time participating in the beach clean-up and she is distressed that there is a recurring need to do it.

“It’s always disappointing to have to come back and do cleaning on this scale. Nonetheless, we are human and so not everybody is going to think in this manner,” added Spence.

President of the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry Oral Heaven also stressed the need for everyone to play their part in reducing the garbage that gets to Jamaica’s shoreline.

“If you look around, the amount of plastics we collected today, it’s crazy. We do this every year, and to see this means that we are not disposing of our garbage properly,” he said.

“For this to be washing up on the shores of our beaches, it means that we need to ensure that we have proper garbage disposal and garbage collection,” Heaven continued.

He lauded the work that Downsound Entertainment has been doing over the years to clean the area.

“This is a great look for Montego Bay. Reggae Sumfest and indeed Downsound Entertainment are making their contribution. It’s really a pleasure for the Montego Bay Chamber of Commerce and Industry to join in this initiative to clean up our beach,” said the chamber president.

For Josef “Joe” Bogdanovich, CEO of Downsound Entertainment which hosts Sumfest, the annual clean-up comes naturally.

“It’s about being ecologically correct, meaning less garbage in your system, because it’s everywhere. The little droplets of plastics are all over the sea and the fish eat it and we eat the fish, you drink the water and we end up with a lot of plastic in our bodies,” he said.

Bogdanovich also sees the clean-up as a way to interact with the rest of the city’s business leaders.

“We feel good working with the community,” he said.