The floating feast
It was a humid morning in Kingston when 12-year-old Amani skipped down to the gully near her home in Waterhouse, her tattered fishing net slung over her shoulder. She wasn’t after the silvery snapper her grandfather once reeled from these waters — none had survived the murky, foetid stew in decades. Instead, she hunted a different catch: plastic bottles, Styrofoam take-out boxes, shredded flip-flops, and soggy diapers bobbing like a grotesque flotilla in the stagnant flow.
“Mama says the sea’s eating our trash,” she told me, her voice barely rising above the rumble of trucks on Spanish Town Road and the sour tang of decay in the air. “But it keeps coming back to us.”
Amani’s innocent ritual is no child’s game — it’s a stark emblem of Jamaica’s spiralling garbage crisis, a noxious brew of untreated sewage, crumbling drainage, and a tidal wave of solid waste that threatens to drown the island’s ecosystems, its people, and its cherished reputation as a tropical Eden. Yet, from this mire, Jamaica could rise as a global beacon — a model for nations drowning in their own refuse.
Sewage, Drainage, and Garbage Collide
Jamaica’s waste management nightmare is a hydra-headed beast. The island churns out approximately 1.5 million tonnes of solid waste annually — 4,100 tonnes daily — according to the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA). The Kingston Metropolitan Area (KMA), home to 1.2 million of Jamaica’s 2.8 million residents, accounts for 46 per cent of this waste, or 700,000 tonnes per year. Much of it piles up in open dumps like Riverton, a 50-hectare sprawl where scavenger birds circle and spontaneous fires — 30 in 2023 alone — belch acrid smoke laced with dioxins over nearby Seaview Gardens.
Meanwhile, Jamaica produces 455 million litres of sewage daily, per the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), but only 25 per cent — 114 million litres — passes through treatment plants. The rest, laden with faecal bacteria and heavy metals, seeps into gullies, rivers, and Kingston Harbour, a 13,000-hectare bay now ranked among the globe’s most polluted, with coliform counts hitting 1.2 million per 100 mL — 1,200 times the safe threshold.
Drainage infrastructure, much of it laid in the 19th century, buckles under modern pressures. Kingston’s 120-km gully network — channels like Sandy Gully and Hope River — clogs with 300 tonnes of debris monthly, from plastic bags to abandoned mattresses. In rural parishes like St Thomas and Trelawny, open drains double as illegal dumps, with 70 per cent of households lacking sewer connections. Climate change amplifies the chaos: Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 dumped 10 inches of rain in 48 hours, flooding 80 per cent of Kingston Metropolitan Area’s (KMA) streets with a toxic slurry of garbage and sewage.
The toll is staggering. Groundwater, supplying 60 per cent of Jamaicans via wells and springs, tests positive for nitrates in 40 per cent of samples, per the Water Resources Authority. Marine life suffocates — 80 per cent of Jamaica’s coastal plastic (1,000 tonnes yearly) is land-sourced, per UNEP — while coral reefs, down 85 per cent since 1980, bleach under nutrient overload. Public health teeters: leptospirosis cases surged 25 per cent post-2024 floods, and tourism, a $4.3-billion industry, haemorrhages as Negril’s Seven Mile Beach logs 50 per cent more debris complaints since 2020.
A Patchwork of Progress
Jamaica has clawed at solutions. The National Water Commission (NWC) has invested $12 billion since 2020 to modernise sewage systems. The Soapberry Wastewater Treatment Plant, expanded in 2022 with World Bank backing, processes 75 million litres daily, serving 600,000 in Kingston and Portmore. Montego Bay’s north coast system, overhauled in 2023 for $3 billion, treats 40 million litres, curbing outflows that once turned Doctor’s Cave Beach brown.
The Kingston Harbour Cleanup Project, a 2021 collaboration with Ocean Cleanup, installed three interceptor barriers — solar-powered, 20-meter-long trash trap s— at Kingston Pen, Barnes Gully, and Rae Town. By December 2024, they had snagged 250 tonnes of plastic, roughly 25 per cent of the harbour’s annual load.
The NSWMA’s $500-million Clean Coasts campaign added 200 garbage trucks and 50 recycling bins islandwide in 2024, while Jamaica Environment Trust’s (JET) volunteer drives cleared 150 tonnes from 20 gullies since 2022.
Policy has sharpened, too. The 2018 single-use plastics ban — covering bags, straws, and Styrofoam — slashed their waste share by 30 per cent, though roadside litter persists due to lax fines ($2,000, rarely enforced). Vision 2030, Jamaica’s development blueprint, targets 100 per cent sanitation coverage by 2030, backed by a $100-billion pledge.
Yet cracks abound. Riverton’s leachate — 300,000 litres daily — poisons the Duhaney River with lead and mercury. Rural sewer access hovers at 15 per cent and drainage upgrades lag, with only 10 per cent of KMA’s gullies dredged since 2020. Funding shortfalls ($50 billion) and corruption scandals ($200 million misallocated in 2023) stall progress, leaving 70 per cent of Jamaicans sceptical of government fixes, per a 2024 Gleaner poll.
What Jamaica Can Do Now
Jamaica needn’t wait for grand funding or decades-long plans. Starting now, we can act:
•Citizen Cleanup Brigade: Mobilise 10,000 volunteers — church groups, students, Rastafarian collectives — via JET and NSWMA for monthly gully sweeps, targeting 500 tonnes of trash by June. Equip them with gloves, bags, and a $500 stipend.
•Gully patrols: Deploy 50 NSWMA “trash scouts” with motorbikes and cameras to fine illegal dumpers $10,000 on site, raising $50 million yearly for drainage repairs.
•School sorting hubs: Install 200 recycling stations at schools islandwide ($10 million via Digicel sponsorship), training 50,000 students to sort plastics and earn $20 per kg for school supplies.
•Sewage skimming: Retrofit 20 major gullies with $1 million in manual skimmers, hiring 100 locals at $1,000 daily to trap 100 tonnes of floating waste monthly.
•Public shaming campaign: Air $2 million in TV/radio ads naming top polluters — businesses and communities — using drone footage, sparking 25 per cent waste reduction via social pressure.
A Global Template for Triumph
Jamaica teeters on a razor’s edge. The garbage crisis is a daily siege, from Amani’s gully to Negril’s coral crypts. Recent gains show grit, but they’re outpaced. This $45-billion, five-year master plan for renewal turns waste into wealth, floods into power, despair into pride.
Immediate steps start now. The cost is high, but inaction’s toll — $150 billion in losses by 2040 — is ruinous.
Jamaica doesn’t have to just survive, it can shine — a reggae-lit torch for nations like Haiti, Indonesia, even Florida’s littered coasts.
janielmcewan17@gmail.com
