Earth Today | Great mangrove clean-up
Corporate Jamaica, schools support Kingston Harbour clean-up efforts
Published:Thursday | May 2, 2024 | 12:09 AM
HUNDREDS OF volunteers from corporate Jamaica and schools, including Tivoli High School and Campion College, together with other stakeholders turned out to last Saturday’s Great Mangrove Clean-up along the Kingston Harbour.
The effort, organised by GraceKennedy Foundation through the Kingston Harbour Clean-up Project and in collaboration with Ocean Clean-up and Clean Harbours Jamaica, targeted seven sites.
Two of those sites – Gun Boat Beach and Buccaneer Beach – were coordinated by the GK Foundation, while the others, including Sirgany Beach and Chiney Beach, as well as the Palisadoes A and B sites, were coordinated by corporate entities, including Jamaica National, Wisynco and Pepsi Jamaica.
Chief Executive Officer for the foundation, Caroline Mahfood, said they saw a good turnout, with some 480 persons participating at their two coordinated sites alone.
“I am very pleased. What was great about it was the positive energy. Everybody worked very hard,” she said.
“It is a very exhausting process to do – collecting, sorting, carrying the garbage up,” Mahfood added.
Included among the hard-working team of volunteers, she said, was the minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Senator Matthew Samuda, as well as the representatives from the diplomatic corp, including British High Commissioner to Jamaica Judith Slater.
The Kingston Harbour Cleanup Project, which started as a pilot in February 2022, is intended to prevent solid waste from flowing into the Kingston Harbour. It has so far seen the installation of waste-trapping technology at the mouths of a number of gullies that feed into the harbour and which is anticipated to extract an estimated 900 metric tons of waste a year.
Debris trapped by the technology is removed by the Ocean Clean-up’s small barge, known as the Interceptor Tender, and transported to an offloading site for sorting and disposal.
The recent beach clean-ups, done as part of awareness-raising under the project, are also intended to help to test the performance of the barriers.
“We are doing the clean-up to see what is the impact of the barrier; how clean will those beaches remain now that the barriers are in place?” Mahfood said, adding that they would now monitor the sites to see if they are remaining clear.
Next on the agenda, she revealed, is another Great Mangrove Clean-up event, which is likely to be undertaken for World Environment Day, June 5.
“We are also wanting to work with the Yacht Club on a trash tournament, where the fishermen and boat owners compete to collect trash,” Mahfood said, noting that there is trash in the mangroves that they would like to clean, but which is not accessible by land.
Mangroves, the only trees that thrive in salty waters, offer a host of ecosystem benefits, from protection against extreme weather and disasters to serving as havens for threatened animals and supporting food security.