JET calls for volunteers for beach clean-up

The Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) is looking to enlist more volunteers for the annual International Coastal Clean-up (ICC) Day on Saturday, September 17.

Programme Director for JET Lauren Creary told The Gleaner that a lot of people are still going for single-use cutlery.

“In order to reduce the need to wash, people probably prefer single-use containers and food packaging, because people are trying to interact safely by not sharing certain items,” she explained. The fact that people spent more time at home over the past two years also resulted in the generation of much more garbage, with a lot of it being styrofoam and banned plastic items.

“We are hoping to get more volunteers, so that we can get more garbage off the beaches as well. Then we can better compare it to pre-COVID-19, before the plastic ban came into effect. Our aim this year is definitely to get more volunteers to get more garbage collected, and to analyse the waste and see what the impacts of the ban have been,” she disclosed.

REDUCE PLASTIC USE

Reducing plastics use, especially of single-use, disposable products and the collection and recycling of plastics can help to reduce the amount of plastic waste that enters the ocean. Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie, CEO of JET, said that “marine debris isn’t an ocean problem – it’s a people problem, and that means people are the solution. We have to start tackling the problem of plastic in the ocean on land”.

ICC Day, held on the third Saturday of September each year, is organised by the Ocean Conservancy. It was started to raise awareness about the growing pollution on various beaches around the world and is important for several reasons:

• To collect as much waste from beaches, thereby preventing the waste from entering the marine environment.

• To collect data on the types of waste collected, which is then entered into an international database. This will help to identify the harmful debris and find ways to stop them from entering the ocean.

• To raise awareness about the impact of pollution on our beaches and oceans, particularly plastic, which takes hundreds of years to break down.

For ICC 2022, groups wanting to host their own clean-up can register as a site coordinator with JET. Registration opened on July 13 and will close on August 9. Those groups who will be coordinating clean-ups will be required to attend a training session on how to plan a safe and successful clean-up, data collection, and waste removal from the site.

Volunteers can also register for JET’s flagship clean-up, whose registration opens on August 24.