Two thousand tons of garbage is a lot of waste. It’s what the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) had, in 1990s, projected would be the daily volume of waste going into Kingston’s Riverton City landfill in the year 2015.

The IDB projection was based on expected population growth and consumer trends. However, over the recent Christmas holidays, the Kingston Metropolitan Region (KMR) produced exactly that amount of garbage daily, said Rachel Allen, director of landfill development and special projects at the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA).

The huge volume of waste raised concerns at the waste management agency, which appears to be now focussing on educating Jamaicans on more efficient waste disposal methods.

“We have to go beyond just messages on the radio and TV telling people what to do,” said Christopher Powell, the NSWMA’s executive director. The agency, he told the Sunday Observer, has been looking at new ways of effecting behavioural change, such as the institution of fines.

Late last year, the acting executive director at the NSWMA, Deryke Smith, said the authority would be issuing tickets for littering, starting as soon as next month.

Smith said the tickets could range from $2,000 to $10,000 depending on the nature of the offence, and added that flicking a cigarette or tossing a lunchbox out a car window will attract a $2,000 fine. The power granted to the NSWMA to issue these tickets lies in Section 46 to 48 of the National Solid Waste Management Act.

Powell pointed out, too, that any campaign to encourage proper garbage disposal would have to be spread across all social groupings.

“Solid waste is everybody’s concern,” he said.

Powell and Allen pointed to the mimicking of North American consumer lifestyles as one of the reasons for the large amount of garbage residents in the KMR produce.

Over Christmas holidays, the tradition of house cleaning meant garbage of a different nature. So people put out items like old couches or television sets. Additionally, people generally consume more over the holidays.

The recent malaria outbreak, added Powell, also prompted people to do more cleaning, which meant more unusual garbage.

A ton is the equivalent of 2,000 pounds and there are close to 580,000 people living in Kingston and St Andrew alone. Because the KMR, which includes some areas of St Catherine, is not defined in the Census, it is difficult to ascertain the population of the region. Therefore, it is hard to determine just how much garbage consumers in that region produce.

Regularly, outside of the holidays, the average intake at Riverton is 1,400 tons per month.

Last week, Allen told the Sunday Observer that the Riverton landfill will reach its capacity in five years. Added to thinking about alternatives for garbage disposal at that time, the NSWMA is trying to figure out new uses for Riverton and the other landfills in Jamaica – Martin’s Hill in Manchester and Retirement in St James – while battling sustained problems, such as a shortage of, and bad equipment, due mainly to scarcity of funds.

The equipment problems have been very obvious in recent weeks, since two fires at the dump left some sections of the Corporate Area and St Catherine in thick clouds of smoke.

“It’s like performing heart bypass surgery using a knife and fork,” Allen said of using inferior machines, some of which were not made specifically for working in landfills.

But even when there are no fires, machines break down regularly. To this end, she said, the state-run agency has made repeated requests for landfill-specific equipment.

The need for new equipment, operationalising a development plan for the dump and getting Jamaicans to understand proper waste disposal, are the main items on Allen’s and Powell’s agenda.

When Riverton can accommodate no more trash, Allen said a plan is currently in place for a waste-to-energy plant at the dump. Waste-to-energy is basically converting the gases produced from landfill waste into processed energy in the form of electricity, for example.

Currently, the waste at Riverton is compressed. Traditionally, waste treatment plants have been dirty, with a lot of visible pollution. Modern technologies have, however, eliminated the nasty outputs.

“With older technology people used to complain about ash and all of that, but now there is modern technology that deals with all of that, so that’s nothing to worry about,” Allen said.

The agency also plans to establish a plastic recycling plant at the dump. According to Allen, there is a building at the Riverton site called the Materials Recovery Facility which was constructed under an IDB project. However, it has been sitting idly for some time.

The plan is to refurbish the building, which was damaged during Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and turn it into a plastic recycling plant.

“We want to generate some income with the recycling plant,” Allen said, adding that ideally the site should earn as much of its own money as possible.

Allen also revealed that by April, work should begin on the construction of eight container site offices at the landfills across the island. These, Allen said, “are tendered and ready to go”. There are also plans to grade and shingle a section of the road leading out of Riverton and installing lamp posts.

And then there are other basic things such as making sure all landfill workers have proper safety gear and are vaccinated against hepatitis A and B, tetanus and diphtheria. The vaccination drive should be complete by the end of this month.

All the items on the checklist so far, are foreseeable, said Allen and Powell. But the biggest challenge they believe lies in a successful public education campaign that encourages Jamaicans to dispose of garbage properly.

mccattyk@jamaicaobserver.com

Four quick tips on proper garbage disposal:

Don’t throw garbage from your car onto the streets.

Keep a small bin or garbage bag in your car.

At home, containerise your garbage, tie and knot bags.

Huge metal baskets at your gate are ideal for storing packaged garbage until the trucks arrive.