Mix of actions over next 18 months to manage waste- Samuda
Published:Saturday | May 21, 2022 | 4:07 PM
Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Matthew Samuda, says the government will be pursuing a mix of legislative and policy actions over the next year and a half to improve the management of solid waste.
He was speaking to The Gleaner this morning as he participated in a beach clean-up exercise organised by the JN Foundation at Sirgany Beach on the Kingston Harbour in east Kingston.
He outlined that programmes to incentivise recycling will be intensified over the next 12 to 18 months in an effort to encourage greater compliance with recycling and to reduce the burden on the state's solid waste management agency.
“Plastics are about 15 per cent of your waste stream, any percentage point reduction means we need less trucks for collection, so if persons are incentivised to physically carry to central points, it reduces the cost and the issues associated with trucking,” he said, pointing out that although plastic is light, it is bulky and takes up significant space.
The incentive programme will run parallel to changes to the Natural Resources Conservation Authority Act and the National Solid Waste Management Act, which is expected to be piloted by Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Desmond McKenzie.
“We have the power to make the legislative changes and we are going to make those,” he said.
An assessment of environmental policies will also be undertaken, the minister said, along with the implementation of another phase of the plastic ban. However, he revealed that the pressures of the current global environment have affected the implementation of the other phases of the ban.
“We have to be very considerate that there is global supply chain issues and that there is global inflationary pressures, so we are taking a very serious look at the next phases and how they are managed,” he said.
Beyond the legislative and recycling efforts, Samuda also said infrastructural inadequacies need to be addressed to manage the country's 830,000 tonnes of residential waste annually, including an ample fleet of trucks and improved accessibility to some communities across the country.
“Because of how we have developed in an unstructured way, many communities are inaccessible to the vehicles that collect the waste,” he said.
“So it is a very layered, very complex issue and it's not free,” he said, but cautioning that there is an even greater cost to inaction.
A combined force of about 100 JN Foundation ACT!ON volunteers, including JN Group ambassador, recording artiste Agent Sasco, and volunteers from the non-profit organisation Earth Ambassadors, collected several pounds of plastic waste along the beach this morning.
A similar mobilisation effort was also conducted by GraceKennedy just metres away in Rae Town.
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