THREE hundred and thirty-six volunteers from 22 schools and 21 organisations, including community groups and the private sector, participated in the Jamaica Environment Trust’s (JET) 12th annual beach clean-up last Saturday at the Palisadoes strip.

Volunteers collected about 280 bags of garbage, which included approximately 3,000 PET bottles.

The activity was held to mark International Coastal Clean-Up Day, the largest one-day volunteer event of its kind supported this year by roughly 500,000 volunteers from more than 60 countries worldwide.

“We focused more on education and less on numbers of volunteers this year,” said the JET’s chief executive officer, Diana McCaulay.

“Volunteers were trained in identifying PET bottles for recycling, and groups separated garbage collected on the beach into recyclables and non-recyclables,” McCaulay said.

“Beach clean-up is an educational activity rather than a clean-up exercise. It would have taken thousands of people and heavy equipment to clear the beach of garbage, because of our poor solid waste practices. As soon as it rains, the garbage discarded in gullies is washed into our coastal waters all over the island. What JET is trying to do is make people more aware of what happens to garbage that is not disposed of properly,” she said.

After the clean-up, a survey was conducted and many participants felt the clean-up had changed their attitude towards garbage disposal. They also felt that more educational activities of this type should be done.

According to Cigale Walters, a student teacher at Shortwood Teachers’ College, “It is good to have such practical educational activities. I certainly benefited from this exercise and I will return to next year’s beach clean-up and next time I’ll bring my students”.

Other items found on the beach included car parts, pieces of furniture, toiletries and household items. The PET bottles were taken to the JET’s recycling depot at 11 Waterloo Road.

In the meantime, employees from Sandals and Beaches hotels carried out coastal clean-ups particularly in areas that have become severely polluted by human waste and improper disposal habits. Dive teams from the Negril and Montego Bay resorts assisted environmental groups such as the Negril Coral Reef Preservation Society and the Coral Reef Alliance to rid the ocean floor of as much refuse as possible, while other team members worked along the coastline to collect all garbage and waste.

The focus this year was on fishing villages where over 100 garbage bags of debris were collected. In fact, the Negril Alliance, comprising Sandals Negril Beach Resort & Spa, Beaches Negril, Beaches Sandy Bay and Negril Gardens, converged on the Negril Fishing Village where residents actually live on the river’s edge.

“It was so sad to see the condition of the area. There are no sanitary conveniences and so residents literally defecate in plastic bags and dump in the river. This is cause for concern. Negril Fishing Village is a major health hazard and something has to be done immediately to arrest a potential outbreak,” said the hotel’s environmental health and safety manager Lesa Banton

Sandals Resorts in collaboration with the Negril Coral Reef Society and the Negril Chamber of Commerce is looking at organising some training sessions with residents about proper waste disposal and environmental preservation as an economic benefit. Additionally, there are plans to build public sanitary facilities for the residents to help them protect their economic mainstay.