Tamar Gordon says she can’t walk pass a discarded plastic bottle or container inside her community and not pick it up.

In fact, each month Gordon helps to rescue between 3.4 and 5.1 million plastic bottles and containers which otherwise may have ended up in the drains, gullies, rivers or the ocean.

“I try to pick them up wherever I see them,” she confessed in an interview with the Sunday Observer.

Gordon gets a lot of assistance from her bosses Del and D’Arcey Crooks and close to 20 co-workers at the Protect the Environment Trust (PET), a non-governmental organisation based at Riverton Boulevard in Kingston. She also gets assistance from hundreds of schoolchildren, businesses and householders who support the Trust’s recovery and recycling project.

“It takes approximately $1.7 million plastic bottles to fill a container, and we export an average of two to three containers per month,” PET’s general manager Del Crooks said.

The plastic bottles and containers come mainly from schools, gated communities and businesses such as Seprod and Wisynco (WATA & Ocean Spray).

“We collect plastic bottles in close to 100 schools in Kingston and St Andrew, St Catherine, Portland and St Mary,” Crooks said, noting that PET provides schools with receptacles for collection and helps to educate the children about the proper disposal of plastic bottles.

PET also targets entertainment events such as Reggae Sumfest, where scores of patrons are likely to use plastic food and beverage containers.

“We supply them with bins, and then we have to pay to put people in place to ensure that persons do not use the bins for garbage,” she explained.

The Trust says it gets additional support from organisations such as DIGICEL, Berger Paints, PepsiCola, Red Stripe, Carlisa Enterprises, Phoenix Printery, Sign Craft, Private Power Operators Ltd, Coldfield, Bayliss Communications, Hillel Academy, the Jamaica Observer, the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) and Jamaica Infrastructure Operator (operators of Highway 2000), among others.

A number of these companies have receptacles in place for the collection of plastic bottles and containers. The Jamaica Observer, Crooks said, had also given the Trust the use of its old Fagan Avenue office “at pepper corn rates”, but she said the Trust outgrew that space and was “now paying rent” at the Riverton Boulevard plant.

In 2009, the JPS, “a huge supporter of our programme”, collaborated with PET, to launch a plastic recycling project at its Kingston headquarters and, according to Crooks, is about to roll out its project islandwide.

Additionally, PET uses the single truck at its disposal to collect plastic bottles and containers in gated communities and from several collection points in Kingston.

“We have one, single truck that is on the road every single day for more than 12 to16 hours a day, and it becomes challenging to do all the collections. So therefore, we encourage people to bring in their plastic bottles to the collection points. People can also bring their plastic bottles to the plant at Riverton,” she said.

Crooks, meanwhile, admitted that although recycling was hard work with little remuneration, the end results were worth it.

“Recycling is not a money-making activity; it’s a labour of love,” she remarked. This labour of love was born in 2005, and since then the organisation has collected and recycled millions of plastic bottles and containers.

“It is extremely labour intensive, and the returns on the plastic is very marginal. So for us to survive and remain sustainable, we have to get grant funding and assistance from corporate Jamaica,” she explained.

The Environmental Foundation of Jamaica is PET’s main source of funding.

For Gordon, who has been employed to PET for a little more than a year, sorting and washing bottles for recycling is rewarding work.

“I love my job because we are helping to clean the environment,” the Tivoli Gardens resident said.

“I also encourage the people in my community not to throw out their plastic bottles as this will destroy the environment. I also collect plastic bottles from some of them and take it to work for shredding,” she told the Sunday Observer.

Pauline Cunningham, mother of six, agreed wholeheartedly that the job was “tough”, but rewarding. She has also been with the Trust more than a year. Her job involves sorting and washing plastic bottles and containers in preparation for shredding.

“It is hard work. I have to first sort the bottles by the different grades, as they have seven grades,” Cunningham explained…After I sort them by grade, I have to sort them by colour and then wash them in soap and water to remove any residue before they are shredded,” she said.

“The money little, but what we are doing is a big help to the environment, she said. “This project was the best thing to happen to Jamaica as we are helping to keep our environment clean,” she added.

Crooks, for her part, would like to see more Jamaicans getting fired up about the need for plastic recycling. “A lot of people don’t have the understanding or mindset that the plastic bottles are not garbage,” she said, while citing the need for public education and greater government involvement.

“The message really,” she continued, “is the fear of what happens to the environment when you just throw away your plastic bottles; because it takes 700 years to start breaking down. And, if it gets to Riverton and they burn it, it can cause all kinds of bronchial problems, so it is important to ensure proper disposal of our plastic products,” she emphasised.

Recycle for Life (RFL), which was funded mainly by soft-drink companies and headed by Bevon Morrison of Call Associates, attempted a similar programme in the 1990s.