Separate and recycle!
MANDEVILLE, Manchester — When you last popped into the supermarket or to the nearest corner shop, how many ‘scandal’ bags did you come away with? Two, three, four…?
What about plastic containers? Did you pick up a couple of sodas, a bottle of fruit juice, plastic bottles of ketchup or cooking oil? Well, if you did, you’d better start thinking about recycling.
Plastic, which experts say is environmentally unfriendly and non-biodegradable, is everywhere. And it’s not easy finding cheap packaging alternatives.
To deal with the growing piles of plastic, environmentalists have not only been screaming ‘recycle’, but ‘separate and recycle’.
They want Jamaicans to separate their plastic from the rest of their garbage so that organisations like the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) can pick it up and dispose of it in an environmentally-friendly manner. It could mean shipping it off to a local recycling company in exchange for cash.
Government, through the NSWMA, which is headed by Executive Director Jennifer Edwards, is spearheading the latest move to get Jamaicans to separate and recycle. Shortly after taking office, Local Government Minister Noel Arscott promised that government would push for greater recycling efforts at the community level, and according to the NSWMA, they’ve been quietly testing the Jamaican waters.
They kicked off a pilot project in three Kingston and St Andrew communities last year – Pines of Karachi, Havendale and Whitfield Town. Today, the project is said to be up and running in Pines of Karachi.
The NSWMA’s latest stop is Mandeville, the capital of Manchester, which is said to be among Jamaica’s cleanest parishes. The organisation has launched phase two of the project in three Mandeville communities — Ingleside, Hope Village and Greenvale.
The idea is to get residents to separate their plastic, store them in special bags provided by the NSWMA’s central Jamaica office, and place them at their gates for pickup. Though the project was formally launched in late April, it actually started on February 25, and since then, garbage collection trucks have been picking up separated plastics every other Tuesday.
The NWSMA’s Calbert McLeod said some 100 homes in each community were brought on board, with Greenvale — a mixed-income community — starting off “very, very, very strong”. Ingleside, a higher-income community, started off rather slowly, but has seen a 100 per cent increase in the number of households on board. Hope Village, however, the smallest of the three communities, has been the most outstanding, with the majority of its 100 households successfully separating their plastic.
Though this particular Government-backed project is new to the parish, Manchester is no stranger to plastic bottle separation and recycling. Years ago, officials at the Christiana Potato Growers Co-operative, which runs an internationally funded greenhouse cultivation project, discovered that shredded plastic can help protect plants from pests and diseases. They started using it as an alternative to expensive, imported materials. Plastic bottle recycling projects have also been launched, with varying results, at Manchester institutions, including Northern Caribbean University.
With limited landfill facilities in Manchester and elsewhere, and each Jamaican said to be producing some 1.2 kilogrammes of waste per day, officials say it cannot be business as usual. While waste, in general, is a big issue, plastic is an even larger problem, as it takes some 500-700 years to disintegrate. That, environmentalists say, will continue to cause major problems for the country’s natural and man-made resources.
North West Manchester Member of Parliament Mikael Phillips, in whose constituency Greenvale falls, has called for government to enforce its anti-litter laws to get people to conform to proper waste-disposal methods.
“Too often we have these laws on our books and we don’t enforce them… those who have receptacles should use them and refrain from burning garbage in the public receptacles that are provided,” Phillips insisted.
Meanwhile, mayor of Mandeville Brenda Ramsay said plastic contamination is becoming a real issue in the Mandeville town centre.
“The park in town that we’re trying to develop for people to relax, the amount of plastic we get from that area each week is unbelievable,” she said, while calling on other communities in Mandeville to get on board with separation and recycling.
“When we separate our plastic products from the rest of our waste, we’re making it easier for the recycling process and making more space in our landfill, which is filling up rather quickly…” Ramsay said.
But, in addition to saving landfill space, Edwards said poor disposal of plastic could cripple Jamaica’s tourism sector, as such wastes often end up in the seas and rivers. With more than 20 per cent of the nation’s waste being plastic, Jamaicans should push to make it income-generating, as some private sector companies were buying plastic for between $8-$12.00 per pound, Edwards said. She claimed some persons “have been earning good money from it”.
Arscott, who officially launched the Manchester leg of the project, said companies like Jamaica Recycle, were making a success of the recycling programme. Pointing out that global demand for recycled plastic was high, Arscott said that in 2007 alone, the United States recycled over four billion pounds of plastic.
“The more we recycle, the more an industry will be developed… recycling plastic frees up our energy consumption. New plastic products from recycled material uses two-thirds less energy,” Arscott said.
The minister promised to give a prize to the Mandeville community which comes out on top at the end of the pilot-project period on July 30.