DEL Crooks is perhaps best known for her exploits in Jamaica’s tourism industry. But she has a new passion – the environment.

Crooks is the female dynamo working behind the scenes at the Protect the Environment Trust (PET) – a recycling company which has over the past four years been carefully forging partnerships to help rid Jamaica of its millions of plastic bottles.

She is also the wife of PET’s chairman and managing director, D’Arcey Crooks – the reason she got interested in the environment to begin with, and who, ultimately, is the reason she opted to join the team at PET as a director last year.

The former film commissioner and manager for missions and promotions at Jamaica Trade and Invest (then Jamaica Promotions [JAMPRO]), reveals how it all began.

“Living in Chicago (as I did for several years), one was always accustomed to the whole recycling process and my husband was so into the environment, he was preaching it in the house day in, day out.

He would say, ‘I cannot believe what is happening to our country’. And then I got involved and wanted to make a difference,” said a chuckling Crooks.

“He was so absorbed that I, little by little, got some of his passion and before I knew it, I was leaving my well-paid job that gave me a lot of inspiration and energy and motivation.

But since I didn’t want him to drop down and die – he was doing it (running the company) single-handedly – I decided to come and help him. And now I am as passionate as he is,” she added of her husband whom she wed in 1995.

Her husband doesn’t know what he would do without her.

“I think I would have gone nuts,” he told Environment Watch matter-of-factly. “There are so many behind-the-scenes things (that need to be organised to allow for smooth operation) – things like logistics, co-ordinating pickups and so on and the multitudes of people who call wanting to be a part of the programme.

She deals with all of that,” he said.

Crooks’ journey to the environment sector has been one of glamour and excitement amidst a heavy workload.

She started work in the tourism industry as an executive assistant to the chairman of Jamaica Vacations and was later seconded to the Jamaica Tourist Board where she was sales manager in charge of Kingston, before becoming the promotions manager.

She subsequently migrated to Chicago in 1986 for “a change of life”.

“I wanted to see Jamaica through the eyes of world rather than see the world through the eyes of Jamaica,” she said.

While there, Crooks opened the doors to her own tour company “and then moved from that to a company that designed props for stores. I was the human resources manager.”

Later, she worked with Air Jamaica for a year before returning to the island where she took up the position as manager for missions and promotions at JAMPRO.

“And then quite by accident I was asked to hold the fort as the film commissioner,” said Crooks, a woman who is clearly passionate about Jamaica’s tourism product. “I was in that position for 10 years.”

She is now in a far less glamorous line of work and one that isn’t making a lot of money.

It costs in excess of half a million dollars to run PET, with its staff of 20 workers – 10 of them from the inner-city community of Grants Pen where the plant is based – each month.

Still, she feels the move has been worth it.

“We have a plastic recycling company which is making such a huge difference to the environment.

When I go to the plant at the old Observer building and see the millions and millions of bottles that are being shredded, I sit back and wonder what would happen if we were not doing this,” Crooks told Environment Watch.

“They (the plastics) would be going into the gully and into Riverton City and you would hear on the 7:00 news, ‘Why is the government not cleaning the gullies? Riverton City (landfill) is on fire.’ I feel at peace in my heart that at least we are trying to make a difference.”

There is also, importantly, the fact that PET, through its operations, is providing jobs for people, especially in a period of recession.

“We have 20 people working for us who are able to go home with a pay cheque at the end of two weeks. So it’s cleaning up the environment but also seeing the impact it is having on the society,” Crooks noted, her enthusiasm for her work obvious.

Meanwhile, she has taken from her previous work experiences a philosophy of partnership with workers to realise success, taking the time, for example, to join them in washing dirty bottles brought in from the streets to be shredded.

“When you give work to people and it seems like dirty work, they think that you are asking them to do the dirty work. So I joined in with them to let them know that this is not work that I wouldn’t do. It is also a good way of reaching out to your staff,” she told Environment Watch.

“I always felt that I should be a team player, and a team player means that you do the dirty work sometimes too and not make it seem as if you are the boss. So you get together and you work together and we all are happy at the end of the day.”

It is this philosophy that she hopes will carry through to Jamaicans as a whole.

“It has to be about working together to make a difference; it can’t be us alone,” Crooks said, adding that her hope was that the passage of the years would see the growth of PET.

“(I want) this company to grow to be able to cover the entire island so that collection of plastics is a part of our lives so that our tourist areas are clean, when you go to the beach or to Kingston Harbour you don’t see plastics floating on the ocean,” she said.

At the same time, Crooks noted that recycling should become mandatory and government should support the efforts of entities such as PET.

“I think we should make it mandatory to recycle and the government should help us in educating and possibly some of the environment cess should go to efforts like these at (PET),” she said. “I know that government’s needs are great these days, but it would be good to get a little of it to help us with this initiative.”